


to be made of stars

by ftera



Series: of stars [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Artist Castiel, Artist Dean, Childhood Friends, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Misunderstandings, brief mentions of past abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-23
Updated: 2014-10-23
Packaged: 2018-02-22 07:07:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 24,012
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2499035
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ftera/pseuds/ftera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Castiel Novak is infuriating. He can't finish an art project without making a huge mess, his typically charcoal colored fingers leave smears along household objects, he makes fun of Dean all the time, and he's a perfectionist about everything.</p><p>It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that Dean's in way over his head, because someone like him doesn't deserve someone like Cas.</p><p>(Of course, that's not to say it won't stop him from trying.)</p><p>It starts out, as most things don't, with a drawing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. unus

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been far more work then what it should've been, but I'd like to thank [Michelle](http://unholyenochian.co.vu/), [Lillie](http://roadhouse.co.vu/), and [Chilton](http://weaksammy.tumblr.com/) for helping me out with editing and being rad betas. Also I'd like to acknowledge [Brenna](http://stardustdean.tk/) and [Lisa](http://stardustcas.tk/) for being too good to me and telling me that this fic wasn't horrible. [Clara](http://deansturbation.co.vu/) made the wonderful art, which can be found [here](http://colourlesscas.livejournal.com/909.html), and it's way more than I deserve.
> 
>  
> 
> You can find me on tumblr [here](http://subtcxt.tumblr.com/) uwu

**Part One: Acknowledge Your Problems**

 

It starts with the sketches that are carelessly placed on their shitty plastic kitchen table in their shitty apartment on a shitty, snowy morning in early January.

At first, curiosity gets the best of him, as it always does, and Dean stops in his tracks to look at them— _look at them, that's it!_ — so sue him for wanting to know what they are. Cas can't be mad at him for simply looking at them, right? Especially when he left them out on the table without any indication that he wanted to keep them private. Dean spends a few minutes observing the drawings, the original thought of making a sandwich slipping from his mind.

Cas is very organized at the best of times and Dean is almost positive that his best friend has OCD, especially when it comes to how their colorful, plastic plates and silverware are put away. Cas is neat stacks in alphabetical order where Dean is shoving everything in one space and hoping they won't fall over. Cas is anal about how things are lined up on their fridge and how he arranges the clothes in his closet— sweaters, jackets, shirts, and then, within each category, grouped together by color, in case you were wondering— and, yeah, Dean is the one who asked Cas to be his roommate in the first place so it's not like he can really complain, not when he knew what he was signing up for.

But when it comes down to Castiel and art projects, forget it.

He leaves half-composed ideas strung all over the place and Dean is sure that there's still paint in the crevices of their hardwood floors ("Fucking look at it, Cas. Did you spill the whole entire fucking can on the ground or what? This shit is everywhere!" Dean had exclaimed when he came home to Cas vigorously attempting to scrub away the mess he'd made. The little shit had just looked up at him and said, "I have no idea what you're talking about, Dean.") He’s not even going to mention the smears of charcoal that are left on random household items. And that one time Cas had used coffee and flung it onto the paper with his fingers? Forget it. There's still spots of brown on the walls of the living room that refuse to be scrubbed away.

So, it isn't like Dean hasn't seen Cas' art before. These are also decidedly innocent, but Dean's already seen Cas drawing dick before ("The whole point of the project is that the subject is _nude_ , idiot. It's a live model art class.") so he doesn't really think that anything could be less innocent than that. But just because Dean's seen it a million times before doesn't mean that seeing newer pieces has become boring. There's always a thrill that goes through him when Dean sees good art, and with Cas, it happens every time the guy picks up a fucking pencil and draws a line.

There isn't really anything special about the drawings on the kitchen table. It's just various sketches of hands, tons of them, all in different positions or holding onto things. A lot of them look the same, with only slight variations in the way the fingers curl, while others are a clenched fist and then the next will show something more relaxed, the palm facing up. Curious, Dean flips through the pile. He looks, somewhat distractedly, at the way one hand curves over the edge of something (closing a laptop?) and the way the other holds a phone and how another one's fingers curl around a pencil, making it look like the most delicate thing. There’s holding a pan, and then tugging at a blanket, and hands reaching and stretching and hands that wrap around themselves, trying to hide.

For a few seconds, his mind drifts, wondering who Cas has used as a reference for this. If he knows anything about Cas, it’s that if it involves the human body, he could spend hours using real people as references. They’ve got sketches everywhere of different places and different people— the coffee shop, their lecture rooms, on the bus, in the record shop, in the garage, in the studio, in Dean's living room back at his home in Lawrence— all because Cas has twitchy hands when they aren’t doing something, and drawing seems to bring the edge off of it.

Dean knows for sure that Cas didn’t use his own hands as a reference. Some of the positions look sort of awkward, and when Cas gets really into it, he likes to use his left hand to keep his paper in place, so he’d probably used it too much to keep it in the same position.

It’s unlikely that he used images from the internet, either. For one thing, the hands are obviously from one person (there's something about the slight curve of the top joint in the pinky fingers that strikes him as familiar and consistent), and there’s no way that there’s someone out there who posts endless pictures of their hands (right?) and there’s also the fact that, unless Castiel can help it, the internet is his last resource for references, especially if it’s something small, like hands or noses or eyes or lips ("Hold still for five minutes, Dean, please, I want to get how the light captures your eyes," he had said, and _no_ , Dean had definitely _not_ blushed).

He goes to put the sketches down and there’s a very real possibility that he would’ve never thought of them ever again if it hadn’t been for Cas, who came into the room then, art supplies tumbling from out of his grasp. (It looks like fucking paint tubes again, and Dean’s going to have to put a sheet down on the floor before Cas even starts.)

“Hey, Dean, do you know where—?” he starts, but Dean will never know the end of that question because suddenly all of the art supplies are on the ground and the sketches are being snatched away from his hands. “What are you doing?”

If Dean didn’t know any better, he would say that there was an almost hysterical edge to his roommate’s voice. But that would be crazy, right? Why would Cas be freaking out about a couple of sketches?

Unless—

“Um,” he says smartly, and then he glances around the kitchen. “I was getting something to eat.”

Cas clutches the papers like they’re something precious, and, Jesus Christ, they’re going through _this_ again. Cas doesn’t get defensive about his drawings unless they’re of someone he likes. It’s only happened with two people before, once with Daphne (bless her heart and soul for putting up with Cas even when he was stressing about his final project for sophomore year. He’d been a pain in the ass to live with then when their teacher had announced that, that year, Castiel’s piece was going to be in the center of the gallery. Never mind that it had been at Cas’ request, the guy had freaked out about it for a solid three weeks. Daphne, thankfully, had taken out Cas each Saturday while they were dating— they probably had some really cheesy dates, maybe the classic dinner and a movie or maybe they went to the bowling alley— so even though Dean wanted her to be out of the picture he’d been relieved by her presence, too) and then again more than once with Balthazar and, yeah, Dean wasn’t going to think about that right then.

“Oh. Okay,” Cas breathes out, and then he seems to remember that he dropped his things because he suddenly looks down and frowns at the offending tubes of acrylic paint.

But, shit, he’s never seen Cas get this defensive about it.

It probably means that it’s someone Dean knows. When Cas had acted like a nervous twelve-year-old girl about Daphne, it had mostly been a _hey, don’t look at my shit_ ordeal. With Balthazar, it had been slightly different, more of a hiding his drawings under another stack of paper if Dean walked by kind of thing, or he would purposefully avoid drawing anywhere Dean might be able to see him, and Dean had only vaguely known Balthazar through Cas' cousin, Gabriel.

So Dean’s first thought is somewhere along the lines of: _shit, I’m totally not prepared for this it could be anyone, oh God— Dean Winchester you are an idiot._

“You, uh, need help there, Cas?” Dean asks instead, trying to brush off the dangerous thoughts swirling around his mind.

Cas has already bent down to start picking up the paint, the hand sketches still in his grasp, and he’s already got most of it in his arms again, so that was kind of a stupid question. But Cas smiles at him, tentative, when he slowly stands back up. “If you could get me one of the sheets in the closet I’ll make you a cake or something.”

“Cake? Cas, that is not the way to get to a man’s heart,” he half-heartedly scolds, shaking his head in mock-disappointment.

Rolling his eyes, he retorts, “Shut up, Winchester. You like my cake.”

Dean childishly sticks his tongue out at him. “Yeah, yeah, don’t let it get to your head.” He tosses his arm over Cas’s shoulder and leads him towards the hall closet, where Dean has collected ratty old sheets specifically for this purpose.

The whole incident brushes past Dean’s head, but the reminder still sits heavy with him.

Cas won’t bring it up, either, so Dean decides to just let it go.

(But the thing is, though, that maybe Dean has had this teeny tiny _totally_ insignificant crush on Cas for a while. Shit— screw a while. _Years_. He’s felt this way for years about his best friend, and isn’t that something messed up?

He likes Cas. Everyone he knows tries to drag the confession out of him, and though Dean will fight tooth and nail about it, he can confess in the safety of his own mind that his feelings for Cas extend past friendly or even brotherly bonds. It's something more _profound_ than that.

He never really noticed it until freshman year of high school. That was the year that Hannah from down the street started sweet talking Cas, and the snarky little shit didn’t even realize what it was until she’d come up to him, blushing and giggling, asking if he wanted to go to a movie with her.

So _maybe_ Dean had seen red then, and maybe he was pissed at Cas for actually _going_ with her, but something warm and satisfying had settled into his gut when afterwards Hannah avoided Cas and, by extension, Dean, like the Black Plague.

After that, it had been a spiral of Cas making it difficult for him to like girls and girls making it difficult for him to like Cas, and, now in college, they’d settled into something sickeningly _domestic,_ and Dean would rather sell his soul than admit that he loved it, every single fucking second of it, but he did.

So maybe Dean likes Castiel. Maybe Dean likes the way that Cas knows when to listen and when to talk. Maybe Dean likes the way Cas is always there to rely on, stable and steady and able to take on the weight of someone else even when he’s already buried under his own. Maybe Dean likes the gentleness that Cas can treat him with when he needs it, and the snarkiness he gets when he doesn’t. Maybe Dean likes that Cas is strong, stronger than most people, even if he doesn’t like the reason why. Maybe Dean likes how Cas can make anyone feel special, even if it's just for a few precious minutes,

Maybe Dean likes _Cas._

And maybe something in him is dying at the thought of Cas wanting someone else, _anyone_ else, who isn’t him.

That's okay, though. Dean just needs some time to adjust to the idea. He can handle it, just like he handles everything else. Whatever, right?

He'll be fine.)

 

* * *

 

It's early May before he brings any attention back to it.

"So how's Cas?" Charlie asks, her fingers skimming over the shirts in his closet. He's in the middle of packing a bag to head back home for a week, and Charlie has spent the past few minutes convincing him that holy jeans and a band tee is "not an appropriate thing to wear to your brother's graduation, Dean Winchester." Whatever, it’s not like Charlie will ever actually know what he wore. He can just add one of Cas’s ties if it looks _that_ terrible.

Dean shrugs, plucking his one and only white button-up shirt from her hands. "Cas is... Cas is good."

"Uh huh," she hums, raising an eyebrow at him. "I know that tone. That's your _Cas and I are having a problem_ voice. Spill. What happened? Tell me everything." He doesn’t think he’s hated her more than he does in this moment right now.

Turning away from her bright, all too knowing eyes, he attempts to fold a pair of jeans. "We're not having a problem," he tells her, stuffing the folded jeans into the bottom of his bag.

"So what is it then?"

Dean's hands pause for a few seconds before his fingers begin tapping against his thighs. He's not entirely sure how to explain to Charlie about how he's pretty sure Cas might be interested in someone without making it sound like he's jealous. (Which, okay, he _is,_ but Charlie doesn't need to know that. She'd probably use it as blackmail in the future, knowing her.) For starters, he isn’t even really sure how to approach the whole _Cas draws pictures of people he likes and I found pictures of hands— fucking_ hands— _months ago and I’m still not sure how to deal with that_ thing, and he sure as hell isn’t ready to explain Cas logics, so he leaves it at that.

"It's nothing," he assures her. "Cas is just a little stressed about finals coming up, is all."

Charlie frowns. "Doesn't he already have his projects put together? It isn't like this is your first rodeo."

Dean goes to his sock drawer, counting out two week's worth of socks. He'll only be down in Kansas for a few days (not including the two days it’ll take to drive there and back), but with his luck Cas will either bring an inadequate amount of socks or he'll just decide to steal Dean's halfway through their stay. Dean isn’t sure how he does it yet, and even when he buys Cas the same brand of socks Dean’s will go missing anyway. He’s going to have to start labeling them or something— the amount of socks he has to buy per month is getting ridiculous. "It's just that my project is center stage this year. I'm not worried about it because when I asked I already knew what I was doing, but I think Cas is stressing out for the both of us because his work is supposed to compliment mine. He keeps worrying about the colors or something. I start tuning him out when he begins to ramble on about fifty different shades of red." He shakes his head. "I'm trying to tell him to stop freaking out about it but you know how he is."

Handing him another shirt, Charlie tsks, "He's going to give himself a heart attack one of these days."

Warily, he takes the offending shirt (why does he even have a pink shirt, for crying out loud?) from her and reluctantly puts it into his bag. "That's why I'm here. Someone has to make sure he's not running himself dry."

There’s a few seconds of silence as Charlie considers the clothes in his closet before he feels the weight of her eyes on him. "Is that the only reason you stick around?" Her voice suggests a tease, but when he glances up at her, a witty response on the tip of his tongue, there isn’t a smirk tugging at her lips, and he realizes that she's being serious.

Blushing, he scrambles for a change in subject. "So I heard you were paired up with Meg. How's that working out for you?"

Charlie huffs. "It's an absolute train wreck," she says, shaking her head. "I can't even stand her, God. She wants to do some weird, freaky three-dimensional thing, but I've never taken a single class that didn't involve graphic arts or still life. I don't know what she expects out of me! I understand that the whole purpose was for the senior class to pair up with someone who didn't take the majority of the same classes, but still. What does she want me to do? Decorate it in rainbows and butterflies? How else am I going to correspond to it?"

"Oh, wow. Just start bringing up really bright colors. I've never seen someone who hates using light colors more than she does. She'll probably think that you're some Bible-thumping Jesus lover and ask for a switch." Dean smiles over at her, winking when she flips him the bird.

Rolling her eyes, she settles her hands on one of the shirts hanging in his closet. "I don't think it's that bad yet.”

“Yet?”

“Besides,” she continues on, pointedly ignoring the doubt in Dean's voice, “the gallery show is next month. It’s too late to back out of projects. I just need to get my shit together.”

He raises an eyebrow. “A month is plenty of time to start over, y’know. Not for some people, but if you started over now I’d have total faith in you.”

The look she gives him suggests that she knows he’s talking shit. “If I really need to, I bet Professor Mills would let me have a new partner. Did you know her husband owns a pastry shop just outside campus? I help bake cookies for them every Sunday— she thinks I'm a gift sent from above."

Dean snorts. "You keep telling yourself that if it gets you through the night."

The look on her face screams menacing, and if Dean didn't know that she was as harmful as a fly, he might be scared. "Dean Winchester, I swear to God if you don't cut it out—"

"Why are we swearing to God?" From Dean's open bedroom door, Cas' head peeks in. He's got more art shit in his arms again (though it's not more paint, so Dean will count it as a win), so he expects that Cas just got back from his art history class.

"Your roommate is being an asshole," Charlie explains, frowning at Cas as if to get his sympathy. (She’s out of luck, though, because Dean knows Cas is an even bigger asshole than Dean is when he wants to be.)

Cas considers this for a few seconds and then gives her a helpless look in response. "I wish I could help you but I'm afraid you're on your own." He leans in a little, as if to share a secret with her, even though the volume of his voice doesn't change. "Personally, I think it's because he got dropped on his head as a baby or ate lead paint at some point, but don't tell him that."

Cas is out of the room again before Dean can blink. "Hey, wait a second!" he calls out, moving to his door.

The only answer he gets is Cas' laughter echoing from down the hallway.

 

* * *

 

The sight of his home is both familiar and foreign. They’re parked in the driveway and the car has been off for a few minutes, but neither of them have the strength to get out and walk up to the front door. Dean doesn’t know why the concept seems so strange to him. That’s still his family in that house, and his mom still bakes him pies in that house, and dad still watches sports on his brand-spanking-new TV in that house, and Sam still does his homework in that house (though not anymore, he’s sure, since he’ll be graduating at the end of this week and, wow, Sam is growing up and Dean isn’t sure what to do with that), and Adam still spends the majority of his time in that house, even though he really shouldn’t be.

It’s still the same house Dean grew up in, sure, but he wonders when he stopped counting this as home home and started thinking of home in the form of a shitty little apartment in Chicago that he shares with his best friend.

It is, at least, an interesting thought.

Cas sighs then, looking up at the house. “You get the bags and I’ll put up with the first gushy welcomes?” he offers. From anyone else it wouldn’t sound like much, but Dean knows; _knows_ how long it took for Cas to get used to being around his family, who treated simple touches like they were nothing, after being treated so badly for so long.

Dean puts his hand on Cas’s shoulder (safe) and smiles gently at him. “You don’t have to.”

“It’s alright,” Cas reassures him, glancing over in Dean’s direction before looking at the front door. “They probably heard the engine when we got here. They’re going to wonder why we’re taking so long.” It’s a dismissal and Dean knows it, so instead of trying to talk Castiel out of it like he might’ve on a normal day, he heads towards the truck after getting out of the Impala.

He still watches, though, as Cas rings the doorbell— he won’t curb the habit no matter how many times Dean told him that it was fine to just walk right on in. Mary answers, her face breaking out into a warm, wide smile that causes something to settle low in Dean’s gut. Though he can’t define the feeling in words, there is something that calls out home to him, somewhere settled beside the spot that’s reserved just for Castiel. “Cas!” she exclaims, throwing her arms out when she sees him standing there. Cas flinches— just a little, just enough so that Dean can tell, even from several feet away— and Mary seems to remember the no-touching rule, bringing her arms back to her sides, but Castiel surprises all of them by leaning forward and pulling her in for a hug.

“Hello, Mary,” he mumbles into her neck, something that Dean barely hears as he hauls their bags up onto the porch.

They let go of each other and Mary moves in to hug Dean as well. He drops their bags on the stoop and tugs her into his arms. It feels so odd for her body to be smaller than his when most of his memories of her involve him being much, much younger. “Hi, Mom.”

She pulls away again and then places a hand on both of their cheeks. “Just look at you two. So grown up, my little soldiers.” There’s a joke in there somewhere, one where Dean and Cas used to pretend to be warriors in the backyard, but Dean just smiles now at the memory. Mary frowns at them. “You two are making me feel so old, and now Sam is graduating from high school this week. You all need to be younger than ten again.”

Dean laughs, reaching out for their bags again. “Yeah, okay, Mom. Once I figure out time travel I’ll make sure that happens, all right?” he teases her.

"Don't you laugh, Dean Winchester, this is serious," she chides him.

He's about to turn around and answer when the sound of something slipping down a few steps registers in his ears and he looks up towards the stairs, grinning. When Sam comes barreling into his arms, he has to pause a second because, wow, since when was Sam this tall? "Hey, Sam."

Sam laughs, then, squeezing him tighter and then letting go. "Hey, Dean." He glances over at Cas, who's shifting (uncomfortable; too much too much too much) near the door. Dean recognizes it for what it is and he grabs Castiel's wrist to pull him closer. (Sam's eyes track the movement, but no one points it out.) "Hi, Cas," Sam adds.

Cas smiles at him, relaxing at Dean's side. He goes to reach for one of the suitcases by Dean’s feet, but he’s swatted away by Dean’s hand, and he huffs in annoyance. Dean knows that Cas won’t forget it— especially when, later on, Dean knows he’s going to be complaining about taking both suitcases up the stairs and asking Cas for help. "Hello, Sam. I would congratulate you but I've been told that it won't count yet."

Sam laughs again. "Yeah, probably."

"So I thought you boys wouldn't be here until tomorrow," Mary says, coming up behind them.

"Dean didn't want to stop." Cas shrugs, picking at the sleeve of his shirt.

Dean frowns (not pouting, _not_ pouting) at his best friend, poking him in the shoulder. "Hey," he accuses, "it's not all my fault! You didn't want to stop either, Mr. Motels-Are-Unsanitary."

"They are," Castiel points out calmly, as if that solves everything.

Mary's hand lands on Dean's shoulder. "You didn't drive the entire time, did you?" she asks, peering at his face as though looking into his eyes will answer that question.

"Nah. Cas took over for a while and forced me into taking a nap."

A surprised laugh rings out of Sam. "What did Cas threaten you with to be able to manage that?"

Beside him, Cas grins.

“What?” Dean asks, glancing from his friend to his brother. “What is that even supposed to mean? What are you implying, Sam? I’m not that bad!” Dean’s thought process comes to a halt, and he blinks over at Cas. “Am I that bad?”

Cas raises and eyebrow and says nothing, but perhaps that’s an answer all on its own.

Trying to steer away from the conversation of him apparently being an asshole about his car (yeah, he knows he is. No need to point it out over and over), he turns to Mary. “So is Adam here too or will it be the five of us for tonight?”

There’s a spark of sadness in her eyes, one Dean tries not to look at. Adam hasn’t been a touchy subject in years, though Dean knows that sometimes, when his mom looks at the young boy, she’s reminded that Adam isn’t really her son. Not by blood, anyway. It hardly matters, though— Adam’s mom is a lost cause riddled by drugs and cheap booze, and, though guardianship is technically his aunt’s responsibility, Adam has pretty much grown up alongside the Winchesters. When his mom had died three years ago, he was supposed to move a couple of towns over to stay with his aunt, but when Adam started sneaking out and showing up on the Winchesters’ couch in odd hours of the morning, his aunt gave up.

The reminder still sits, though, that John had cheated on his wife. Mary forgave him years ago, even if Dean thinks she shouldn’t have. It had never _really_ changed his viewpoint of his father. By the time the news came around that John had knocked some girl up, Dean was six and could barely understand what his parents were arguing about. By the time he was old enough to really get what had happened, Adam was almost seven, and the younger sibling seemed to make up for the mistake.

Mary shakes her head. “He’s out with some friend of his. Garth, I think it was? Odd kid, odd family, but you know how he is.” She waves her hand in a dismissive gesture, and then looks down towards the kitchen. “Why don’t you two go put your things away? Dinner will be done in a couple of minutes, all right?”

She leaves the three of them alone after quick pecks on their cheeks. Sam turns towards his brother but gets interrupted by the sound of his cell phone ringing. Sam glances down at the screen and then blushes, making up some excuse about a final project with a classmate, but Dean would know that blush from anywhere. It's probably Jess, he thinks, the girl Sam has been dating for the past few months.

“Alright, Cas,” Dean sighs. “Let’s get this party started.”

(He was right, by the way. Dean makes it about halfway up the stairs before he’s cursing about how the two stupid suitcases won’t just cooperate, and when he goes to ask Cas for help, his friend just smiles, shrugs, and continues on up the steps.)

They go back downstairs a few moments after they get their things settled in their appropriate rooms— Cas in the guest bedroom closest to the stairs, and Dean in the third bedroom, nestled between the rest of the rooms.

Mary makes beef stew for dinner ("But you always make burgers when I come home!" Dean says, frowning, and she whacks him on the back of the head and reminds him that he wasn't supposed to come until tomorrow). They all sit at the table in silence eating until Dean turns to Sam. "So how's Jess?"

Sam looks down at his spoon with sudden interest.

"Sam?" he tries again, peering over at him.

Sam coughs. "We— we're, uh, we're fine. She's fine. Everything is fine."

Yeah, like _that's_ reassuring. "You're such a liar. Seriously, Sam, what's up?"

"It's nothing," he insists. "It's just— it's just that Jess is considering not going to Stanford anymore. She wants to take a year off or something. Can you even do that?"

John and Mary stop eating, glancing at each other. "Sam," Mary says, "why didn't you say anything sooner? I didn't know you were so upset about this."

"I'm not upset," he tries to convince them. "I'm confused, mostly. We had plans, and I don't get why she's backing out of it.”

Castiel looks around at all of them and then his gaze focuses on Sam with laser-like intensity. “But you were upset about it before.” The tone of his voice doesn’t leave room for questions. “So she decided this a while ago.”

Frowning at a cut-up potato, Sam nods, “It was back in March. I thought she was kidding.”

Dean glances at Cas, lifting an eyebrow in question. Cas raises an eyebrow back, seems to mull something over, sighs, and then nods. “Do you know what we need, Samantha?” Dean asks, turning back around to face his brother. “What about a road trip?”

“Sam still has school, and so do you two,” John points out before going back to his soup. At least someone is enjoying it without interruption.

Dean considers it. “So then once school is over. A road trip. One last big bang before college. Get that girl out of your head.”

Though Sam doesn’t really seem all for the idea, the beginnings of a smile cross over his lips. “Yeah,” he says. “Okay.”

 

* * *

 

The first night, Dean wakes up to the sound of screaming, and, really, he should've expected it.

There's a flash of hard, quick panic and before he knows what he's doing, scrambling out of bed (read: tripping while trying to get out of his sheets), and scrambling down the hall and into the guest room.

Cas is sitting upright in bed, and while the screaming has stopped he's still gasping for breath, looking around the room like he expects something to pop out of the closet. Dean pauses in the doorway for two seconds— two seconds too many— before he's in the room and reaching for Cas and pulling him into his arms.

"Shit, Cas," he mutters, pulling his friend into his chest. Castiel's fingers grip his shirt with a harsh, desperate intensity, and it reminds Dean of moments like these when he was younger. The only difference between then and now is that Dean is less worried, less scared, and that Cas is safe and warm in his hold and not hurt. "I thought you said that it was getting better."

There might be an answer, but it's swallowed up in between breathless sobs and the fabric of Dean's t-shirt. "You said it was getting better," Dean says again, but this time it's softer, less accusing.

Dean looks up briefly, and Mary is standing in the doorway watching them, concern in her eyes. "Is he okay?" she mouths.

He shakes his head.

"Can I do anything?"

His eyes travel down to Cas and then back up to his mom. He shakes his head. "Go to bed," he mouths back at her. "I've got him."

Mary pauses for a few seconds, and Dean takes a while to wonder what this must look like to her. He's vaguely aware that he's rocking back and forth, and that his hand is carding through Cas's hair. He wonders if she sees Cas's fingers, curled tightly around the collar of his shirt, or if she can see anything past the expression he knows is on his face, the worry and concern and the anger that he feels burning beneath his skin.

It looks as though she is going to say something, but then she decides against it, making a gesture that shows she's holding something, and then bringing it up to her mouth. He understands the motion, though, and nods his head in relief. Mary holds up one finger and then disappears from the doorway.

Cas waits until her footsteps can be heard on the stairs before speaking up. "I'm sorry," he mumbles, pressing his forehead against Dean's collarbone. "I'm sorry, I just— being back here. The memories—"

"Yeah," Dean says, "I know. You don't have to explain that to me." It's not like he doesn't already know. It's not like Cas hasn't shown up in the middle of the night before, bruised and bloody and sore. "It's all right."

He holds Cas in silence for a little while longer until Mary comes back, this time with two mugs in her hands. She hands one to Dean— he has to shift around a little to be able to take it— and the other to Cas, who takes it gently out of her hands and cups it between his palms like he's afraid of dropping it.

"I put three sugars and some cream in it, just how you like," she says from where she's crouched down in front of him.

Cas gives her a soft, hesitant smile. "Thank you, Mary."

Her answering smile is just as careful. "No problem, kiddo. Just get some rest, all right?" She reaches out and slowly pats his shoulder as if afraid of frightening him. "I'll see you two in the morning. Does eggs and bacon sound good for breakfast?"

Both boys nod at her, and she presses small kisses against their foreheads before getting up again.

"I'm sorry for the disturbance," Castiel mummers as she's passing through the doorway.

Mary frowns. "Don't apologize, sweetheart. Go to sleep, I mean it." Her tone is stern, showing no room for arguments.

Once she leaves the room, closing the door behind her, Cas tenses in Dean's hold. "You can go back to bed now, if you'd like. I'm just going to drink this and then pass out again."

Dean shakes his head. "Nah. I'm good where I'm at, thanks for asking. I wouldn't mind the company."

"So you haven't gotten bored of me yet?"

He chuckles, shaking his head. "Cas, we've lived together for a long ass time. I got bored of you years ago," he teases, and both of them start laughing. After a few minutes of quietly sipping coffee, Dean speaks up again. "Do you want to talk about it?"

Cas glances over at him, the mug still cradled between his palms. They had moved apart a while ago, both of them now leaning back against the headboard. "I— do you _want_ me to talk about it?"

He shrugs. "It used to help when we were younger." Dean laughs then, a bitter sound, before glaring down at the remains of coffee in his cup. "Do you remember the first time you crawled through my window?"

"Gee, Dean," Cas huffs, "way to make me sound like an ax murderer. Or maybe more like a stalker? I'm not sure which one is worse."

"I'm serious," he tries. "We were twelve. I think your lip was bloody. Right?"

Cas sighs. "Yeah. I don't even remember what I was thinking, God, climbing up that stupid lattice. I don't even remember leaving home. Everything was so blurry and confusing and then suddenly the next thing I know I find myself knocking at your window at one thirty in the morning."

"I thought you were going to get yourself killed."

"So did your mom, apparently, because when she was cleaning up my lip in the bathroom she told me that if I hadn't busted my lip she would've done the beating instead for showing up in the middle of the night in my condition." He takes another sip of his coffee. "Your mother can be quite terrifying sometimes. I think you get that from her."

Dean says, "Oh yeah, sure, sure." There's a pause, and then, "Asshole."

"You wouldn't have me any other way," Cas replies, winking at Dean, the little shit.

Dean rolls his eyes. "Of course not." He glances up at the ceiling again. "What did you tell her that stopped her from calling someone up? I know Mom, and I know how she is about people getting abused. She'd get really shaken up about it, y'know, when she had to deal with that at work. There were times, too, when she worried about you. She hated that she never did anything about it."

"I... I told her the truth. Most of it. I told her that it was the only time it had happened. I told her that Anna and Muriel and Hael still depended on me. I told her that there was nowhere else we could go, nowhere else we could run to. I told her that I hated it but that I needed it, too, because as long as it was me, it wouldn't be them. I told her I could handle it on my own, that I _would_ handle it on my own." Cas sounds distraught, staring down at his fingers.

"But you still kept coming back."

He lets out a shaky exhale. "I did. And you kept letting me. You never told her again after that, did you?" It's phrased like a question but said in the tone of a statement, and he wonders, briefly, if it’s a habit used to placate others. People like it when they have options, and people don’t usually get angry with questions like they do with demands. (He hates that, too. Cas doesn't deserve that, never deserved it.)

Dean nods. "I didn't know how. I wanted to help but you kept telling me that it was fine, and I kept believing you. I told myself, over and over, that next time— next time I'd tell her. Next time I would let her know that you weren't as fine as you said you were."

"I was fine," Cas mutters, refusing to look at him.

"Cas, your _entire back_ would be covered in bruises. That is far from _fine_ ," he snaps.

Castiel is silent for a moment, and then, "I would have done the same if our parents were switched."

Dean's mouth snaps shut. "Yeah," he finally says. "You would. I would probably do the same, too. Just the thought of Sam or Adam being in that position—" Dean shakes his head. "Your dad didn't deserve you."

"Dean—"

"No, Cas, I'm being serious. What kind of asshole does that? To his own child? What kind of parent looks down on one kid in particular just because he's the only son he has? Luke was an asshole, Cas, and everything he said to you or about you was shit, and you know it! He wasn't a dad, he was your abuser! He—" Dean cuts off, his throat closing up, thick with unsaid emotions. "He hurt you," he says instead. "He hurt you, and he broke you, and I hated that. I let that happen, too, and I hate myself for it."

"Dean," Cas says, and this time his voice is smaller, quieter. "I know. And it's okay. Everything is okay."

And, unbelievably, that's how Dean finds out that he's crying.

Cas keeps repeating himself, over and over, moving the mugs to the nightstand and then gathering Dean close to him, tugging him in towards his chest. When Cas's fingers begin stroking through his hair, Dean says, "I could've helped you, and I didn't."

Cas tucks Dean's head under his chin. "You did, though, eventually. He's behind bars now, Dean, and you helped do that."

"I could've done it sooner," he insists, and the arm that's beneath Dean's neck begins to flex and shift and relax as Cas starts to trace patterns against his back. The feeling of the muscles in Cas's arm moving is strangely more comforting than the patterns.

"It was my fault, too. I told you not to."

Dean squeezes the material of Cas's shirt harder. "I shouldn't have listened to you."

"You have a problem saying no to me, but that's understandable." Cas continues tracing patterns and running his fingers gently along Dean's scalp. "It's all in the past, Dean. It doesn't matter right now. Just go to sleep."

He feels guilty, then, because he was supposed to be doing this, lulling Cas into sleep, but too soon he finds his eyelids drooping, refusing to stay open, and he falls asleep in the comfort and safety and warmth of his best friend's arms.

 

* * *

 

“Sooooooo…”

“So?”

A sigh. “Did you get the picture?”

“Yes, Charlie, I got your picture. What was it, a brick?” Dean shakes his head, walking down the grocery store aisle as he tries to find Sam’s weirdo health bread. Sam had promised that it was a certain brand, and that the grocery store definitely had it, but for the life of him he can’t think of the type of bread it was off of the top of his head.

“No, you idiot, that was my art project! I didn’t know what to do with it, really, so I did different design and color panels on the outside,” Charlie explains.

He frowns. “You mean the project you’re supposed to do with Meg?”

“Yes, asshole. What other project?”

“Just wondering.”

There’s a pause from the other line, and then Charlie asks, “And what did you think of it?”

Dean isn’t sure how to respond to her. “… Dude, I wasn’t kidding earlier about getting a switch.”

“Fuck.”

“Yeah.”

“And I knew it, too.”

“You did.”

Charlie sighs. “Whatever. I’ll talk to Professor Mills tomorrow.”

“You do that,” he mumbles, grabbing one of the loaves of bread and inspecting it. It’s wheat bread, though, and he thinks that Sam said something about whole wheat or whatever, and he isn’t sure if it’s the same thing.

Charlie decides to change the subject. “So how’s Cas? And Sam? What are your plans for this week? Have you decided to do something fun for a change? You don’t do anything fun anymore. I think that’s Cas’ fault. He’s, like, tamed you or something. That’s what you get for domestic settings, Dean. I’ve been trying to tell you that.”

“Domestic settings? So you and Gilda aren’t _domestic_?” Dean teases, waggling his eyebrows and then feeling stupid because she can’t see it.

She snorts. “No, Gilda and I are banging. That’s not domestic, that’s roommates with benefits. It’s completely different. You’d have to start sleeping with Cas for that to change.”

Dean doesn’t say anything.

“Oh, shit. You’re sleeping with Cas?!” she exclaims. Right, like he would tell her if they were. (Who is he kidding, he would _totally_ tell her if they were.)

“No.”

It sounds like she’s smiling when she answers with, “You sound like a grumpy four-year-old. So you’re not banging Cas, okay. But you want to, right?”

“Um…” He’s sidetracked again, but he thinks that he finally found the right fucking bread, thank God.

“Is it just a sex thing? I mean, I know he’s attractive and all, but you know how Cas is. He’s gone out with, what, one person since I’ve met you guys? Two, maybe? Cas is a relationship kind of man. Is that what you’re going for? I don’t think it would work. I mean, honestly, Dean, when is the last time you had a relationship? There was that one time with Lydia that lasted for a few months but that was it, man,” she rambles.

Dean drags his hand across his face, going off to look for peanut butter. “Charlie, I _know_ this.”

“So you’re going to try for it?”

“I… I think so?” He hesitates.

“Seriously? Because Cas is, like, your best friend,” Charlie says.

“And your point is?” he asks, rolling his eyes. _Thank you, Captain Obvious._

“My point is that Cas is your best friend and you two have gone through a lot of shit together and you know that Cas isn’t going to be just some small, once and a while thing, and you know you’re shit at relationships.”

“Oh.” It’s not like he didn’t know that, it’s just that he never thought about it. But, yeah, that _would_ make sense, wouldn’t it? He can’t recall a time where Cas ever brought someone home, and if he ever shows up the next day looking tired and wearing yesterday’s clothes, there’s also some sort of art substance on him, like charcoal or paint or, within the past few months, paper mache. That doesn’t mean… Does it?

“Yeah, _oh_. Like if you fuck that up you’re going to ruin the best friendship ever,” she continues, oblivious.

“Shit.”

Charlie still talks, even though Dean is only halfway paying attention. “Wow, and if you fuck it up with Cas who knows what would happen. He’d probably hate you and never want to talk to you ever again and who else would put up with your massive amount of shit?”

“Are you trying to talk me out of this?” he snaps.

There’s a second or two of silence, and then, “No…?” as if she’s unsure.

“Because it sounds like you are,” he points out.

“I would never!”

He lets her stew in her thoughts while he grabs the nearest jar of peanut butter off the shelf.

She sighs again. “Okay, so maybe I would, but this is Cas. Not to be rude or anything, but he’s way too good for you.”

“Yeah, he is.”

“Wow, no arguments? I was expecting some sort of comeback.” She sounds amazed.

Dean shrugs to himself, deciding whether or not to grab a case of beer, too, while he’s at it. “Cas is too good for anyone, though. So it’s not like it will make that much of a difference.” Maybe not, though. Cas would probably yell at him. Or maybe his mom would.

“So you’re seriously, honestly, totally, one hundred percent going for it?”

“Yes.” He’s certain of this.

“Good for you. Look, you get your girly thoughts put in order and call me back in a little when you have it all together. I have to go talk to Professor Mills about a possible last minute project change.”

“Okay.”

“Okie dokie. Bye, princess!”

“Bye, asshole.”

Hanging up does not feel like the right thing to do. He sighs, and then hits the redial button.

“What?” God, now _she_ sounds grumpy.

“Charlie, I need help.”

She laughs. “No shit. I told you to call me back later, as in, later today and not a few seconds after I hang up.”

Dean sighs, mentally preparing himself. “Charlie, I need you to help me impress Cas.”

“I think he’s already thoroughly impressed. I mean, have you seen your cute little butt?”

“I’m serious!” he exclaims, and then glances around to see if anyone heard his outburst.

“So am I. I mean, I don’t swing that way, but yeah. Your butt is definitely one of your finer qualities.”

He almost stops walking, frowning at the floor. Curiosity overtaking him, he tries to twist around to see his backside, then realizes that it’s a waste of effort and stops.

“All right, all right already. What do you need?”

“How do I ask Cas out?”


	2. duo

**Part Two: Be a Man and Do Something About It**

 

Castiel likes Dean’s hands.

He supposes that they’re… _nice_ , as far as hands go, but they’re more than that, too.

So maybe it’s cheating, just a little bit, but it’s always easier to know what Dean is thinking when Castiel looks at his hands. While that may be true for a lot of people, he thinks that it means more with Dean. It might have something to do with the fact that Dean is practically allergic to emotions, but it might also be have something to do with the fact that Dean is misleading. Dean is an expressive person, Castiel knows, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that Dean’s showing the emotion he’s feeling.

For example, if Dean were to be scared, though it’s only happened a handful of times, he would be all smirks and cocky retorts, but his hands might be shaking. If he was angry, he _might_ be frowning, but more often than not his face is blank, resigned. His hands, however, would be in fists, held so tightly that his knuckles were turning white. When he’s worried, he’ll constantly rub his hands together. When he’s concerned, his hands reach, trying already to fix a problem he doesn't even know if there’s a resolution for.

Castiel has Dean Winchester down to a science, because even if he says one thing and means another, his hands don’t lie.

Upon meeting him at five years old, they were perhaps the first thing that Castiel noticed about the other boy in their kindergarten class. Dean had been coloring then, sloppily, might he add, but the way he held the crayon in his hand had made Castiel wonder, had shown that Dean was confident in this, even if the marks didn’t always stay in the lines.

Castiel hadn’t talked to him then, in fear of scaring him off, but a few days later it had been Castiel who was coloring and it had been Dean who approached _him_. It’s one of his clearer childhood memories, the way Dean had leaned over the table next to him to stare down at the coloring book page. “You’re really good,” he had said, and it took Castiel a while for him to realize that the other boy was actually talking to him.

“You think so?” Castiel had asked.

“Yeah. It’s better than mine. I can never get it in the lines.” He had frowned then, but his fingers were tracing along the lines of Castiel’s picture, so he figured that everything was alright.

“I’m Castiel,” he’d blurted, a mouthful for a six-year-old, and he expected the other boy to at least mispronounce it or even mock him for it. He got the opposite.

Dean looked up at him and smiled, settling Castiel's nerves. “I’m Dean,” he’d said before holding out his hand.

There had been a feeling of something safe when his palm had slid against the younger boy’s. “Hello, Dean.”

“Hi, Cas,” he’d replied, though his smile had said that he thought Castiel to be a little odd. They never mentioned the nickname, but he always thought it was nice.

A few weeks later, though, when Lilith had tripped him and laughed, Dean had been ferocious protecting him, yelling at her about how they should _just leave Cas alone_. Afterwards, Dean had helped him up and then shadowed in his footsteps for the rest of the day. They would be inseparable after that day, easily falling into the roles of best friends.

Many years later, Castiel would think that that was the point in time he fell in love with Dean Winchester.

There were other memories, too, that floated up. They would play out in Dean’s backyard, using twigs as swords as they pretended to be knights. Castiel had been a little discouraged at the realization that there wouldn’t be anything like a sword to use, but Dean had picked up a twig without a second thought and said, “This’ll work.” It had been the way he held it, though, so sure of the twig’s abilities, that made Castiel pick up another twig and bat it against the one his friend was holding.

When Castiel’s mom died when he was nine, Dean was there, too. Castiel tries not to think about that period of time, but when he does, he recalls the way Dean had hugged him when he’d found out the news. It had rained the day of her funeral. Castiel was too out of it to remember to hold up his umbrella, so Dean had slipped out from beneath the one Mary had been holding and grabbed Castiel’s umbrella, moving it above both of them. Dean’s hand had somehow made its way to Castiel’s hand, squeezing it once to say _I’m here_ , and Castiel had never been more grateful.

Dean’s hands could be gentle, too. The first time his father had hit him, he was eleven. Before he could really think about what he was doing, he’d made his way to the Winchester’s house, and he wondered when he started to think of this place as safety, as warmth. It had been Mary that time who had cleaned him up, but every time after that, it was always Dean who would wipe away the blood or disinfect it with a cotton ball. Each time Dean had been focusing on the little cuts or bruises Castiel had across his skin, but Castiel had focused on Dean’s face, focused on how Dean’s hands felt against him, touching him as if he might break, as if Castiel, above other things, _deserved_ it.

When they call Sam’s name during his graduation, Dean is smiling but his hands are twitching.

Castiel gets it. He does— there’s a certain fear that develops in you each time your sibling graduates, a fear of _what happens now_? Castiel has gotten it each time, with each graduation of his sisters that he’s attended; from Naomi to Rachel to Hester to Anna. His three older sisters are all graduated now, living their lives. Anna, only three years younger than him, and Hester are still in college, though he imagines that he’ll have to attend another graduation for Hester sometime soon. He knows Rachel has decided to become a yoga instructor while trying to figure out what she really wants to do. The last he heard of Naomi was something about becoming a high school teacher.

Each time, fear had seized his heart, fear of being left alone, fear of how life would move on.

He’s _still_ afraid, too, for what will happen to Hael and Muriel once they’re done with school. In reality, he knows that he’s not much older than them, but he still wonders at what the future will bring. As the youngest, they’d managed to get out of the most of their father’s terrible parenting— something that he thanks whatever higher power there is out there for everyday. He hopes that they have it better than the rest of them did.

He’s still never been able to quite shake off the clench in his throat at the thought of the unknown. So of course he understands what Dean is feeling.

He doesn’t say anything to his best friend, but he does cover Dean’s hands with his own. They don’t look at each other, and Dean doesn’t say anything either, but he squeezes his hand, once, and Castiel knows that it’s relief, that it’s a thank you in itself.

It’s enough.

 

* * *

 

After the nightmare he had the first night, Castiel had taken to sleeping in Dean’s room. It was more convenient  simply, to stay close to someone in case the nightmares popped up again, or have a body in close proximity, as if shared warmth could chase bad thoughts away. That's, at least, what Dean had said, but Castiel didn't have the heart to mention to him that nothing would stop the onslaught of repressed memories once the box in his head let them free.

It’s where he currently was, lying on his side, waiting for Dean to come back. The rest of the house is quiet, with Mary and John sleeping and Adam probably downstairs in the living room, watching the TV on mute. Castiel doesn’t understand it and he probably never will, but Adam prefers to just look and not hear, so he won’t say anything. Sam, having graduated just hours before, is settled down in his own room.

Dean, however, had dropped Castiel off at home and then left.

Castiel still isn’t really sure why.

(“I’ve, uh, got something I need to do. It shouldn’t take too long,” Dean had said, rubbing his hand against the back of his neck— nervous, nervous, nervous.

Castiel squinted and then shrugged. “O-kay…? I’ll be here.”

“Thanks,” he mumbled, quickly moving to pull out of the driveway. But the look on his face—that, Castiel decided, was terror. _He’s probably still freaking out_ , Castiel told himself, and then left it at that.)

It had been a good two hours ago, and while Castiel never really worried about Dean, he was right now. It was stupid, he thought, but he was regardless. It’s because of the way he looked before he left, Castiel tries to tell himself. That’s it.

_It’s not like I’m his mother or something._

From downstairs, he can hear the front door being unlocked, and he hops out of bed before he can change his mind. He tries to be quiet, though, mindful of everyone else who’s sleeping. No one is in the main entry when he stumbles down the steps, so he heads into the living room. Like he thought, Adam is sitting on the couch. He looks up briefly as Castiel passes, tilts his head a little towards the kitchen, and then glances back towards the screen. Surprisingly, Castiel notices as he passes that the volume of the TV is on, but it’s still near silent.

The refrigerator door is open, illuminating the kitchen enough to see Dean standing at the counter with a cup in his hand. Castiel stops in front of the island, unsure of how to proceed. At that moment, though, Dean turns around. “Shit,” he says, inhaling deeply. “I thought you were—“ He waves his hand in the air dismissively.

“No. I was, uh, getting something to drink.”

Dean nods. “Right, right. Don’t let me stop you.”

“I won’t,” Castiel says. He still doesn’t move, and neither of them door say anything for a few minutes. There’s crumbs left on the counter and Castiel is pretty sure that there’s still evidence of dirty fingerprints on the fridge door from when he used charcoal the previous night and wanted ice cream. He tries to find the small little lines in the granite countertop in front of him, tries to find something to distract himself from looking at Dean.

Coughing awkwardly, Dean turns back to the fridge. “Hey, uh, are you hungry?”

He opens his mouth to tell Dean that he ate a little while after he got back home, but then decides against it. “Sure, yeah. I could eat.”

“Does the Roadhouse sound good?”

“It’s late,” he stupidly points out.

Dean’s eyes land on the clock on the microwave. “It’s still before midnight. It’s a Saturday, Cas. They’ll still be open. Besides, their burgers are the best in town.” Castiel hesitates still. “The worst that can happen is that they’ll be closed and we have to find somewhere else to go. Or maybe it will be open and Ellen will be there and she’ll smack us upside the head for being there so late. I’m not sure which one would be better, actually…”

“She’d smack _you_ upside the head, that’s for sure,” Castiel says, snorting. “Ellen likes me.”

“Yeah, I’m still not sure how that happened.”

Castiel shakes his head, and they both move towards the front door. “I think it’s because I never hit on her daughter.”

Pouting, Dean huffs. “It’s not like Jo and I ever did anything! We kissed— once! It was a game of spin the bottle, what else was I supposed to do? Besides, Jo put me in my place anyway. The first thing she ever did to me was shoot me in my back with a frigging water gun.”

“Still one of my favorite childhood memories, I think,” he says, smiling fondly at the reminder. “God, it’s no wonder why the Harvelles like me better. I don’t flirt with anyone’s daughter, I’m always nice to them, and, let’s face it, it doesn’t hurt that I’m better looking. Plus there was that one time that I drank both Ellen and Jo under the table. I still can’t believe you didn’t bet on me— I told you I was no lightweight.”

They slip into the car, and Dean taps his fingers against the steering wheel. “Cas, _everyone_ says they’re not a lightweight. Of course I thought you were.”

He laughs. “You’re just mad that you lost fifty bucks.”

“No I’m not.”

Castiel raises an eyebrow in disbelief.

“… Shut up.”

 

* * *

 

As it turns out, the Roadhouse _is_ open, and Ellen _does_ smack Dean on the back of the head, but once they settle into chairs at the bar, she flashes a warm smile Castiel’s way. Castiel just smiles back and then winks over at Dean.

“What are you boys doing out so late? I figured the both of you would be knocked out by now with your brother,” she chastises them, pouring them both a Coke even though neither of them asked for anything.

Dean shrugs, picking up a menu and glancing at the selections, though both Castiel and Ellen already know what he’s going to get, so there’s no use looking anyway. “We couldn’t fall asleep. Sam passed out a while ago.”

“Your mother mentioned that he almost tripped onstage.” Ellen places the drinks in front of them, and Castiel flashes her a thankful smile before picking his up. “He’s too tall for his own good.”

Castiel leans over to look at Dean’s menu, glancing at the different burger selections. “I swear he wasn’t that tall in January,” Dean tells her, tilting the menu slightly so Castiel can see as well. “I wish I’d recorded him walking up there, though. The look on his face when he stepped on his robe— priceless!”

Ellen shakes her head, tapping the opening to the kitchen behind her. “Regulars for the boys,” she says into the doorway, and then turns back to the two of them. “I think he grew a foot in March alone. And now he’s refusing to let me cut out that damn hair of his.”

“I think it’s his mission to make it difficult for everyone else,” Dean agrees, nodding. He takes a sip of his soda and then frowns down at it. “Can I get a beer?”

Considering, Ellen looks over at Castiel. “I’ll only give it to you if you let Cas drive you both back home.”

Dean frowns. “No fair.”

“Take it or leave it.” She shrugs.

Grumbling under his breath, Dean fishes his keys out of his pocket and then hands them to Cas. “Fine,” he mutters, sliding his cup back towards the edge of the bar counter.

Ellen makes the face she usually does before she smacks Dean but refrains from doing it, instead dumping out the drink and fetching a new cup. While she fills it up, Dean bumps his shoulder into Castiel’s. “What’cha thinkin’?”

Having taken the menu from Dean some time ago, he shifts his attention away from it and looks up. “About what?”

“I don’t know. About anything. What’s on your mind _right now_?”

Castiel glances back down at the menu. “Well, right now I’m currently wondering if I should change things up.”

“What kinds of things?” Dean asks, leaning in to also peer at the menu like he’ll find answers there if he looks hard enough.

“I’m debating whether or not I want bacon on my cheeseburger.”

He tsks. “That’s lame,” Dean says, grabbing the menu from Castiel’s hands. “To bacon or not to bacon? Personally, I say yes, but that’s just because bacon is good on just about anything.”

“Did you know that there are such things called bacon bowls? Bowls literally made out of bacon. Think about it.” He shapes his hands together in a bowl gesture, staring down at it as if it’s the most interesting thing in the world. Maybe he was a tad bit more tired than he thought he was. This was probably a bad idea.

“ _Bacon bowls_? How long have you known about this?”

Castiel frowns, trying to recall when he first heard about it. “A few months ago, maybe? It was a commercial on TV. I think I saw it in Wal-Mart a few weeks ago.”

“You knew all this time? And you never _told_ me? What kind of friend _are_ you?” Dean asks, actually sounding offended.

It takes him a few moments to realize how serious Dean actually is about the matter. “I… You’re kidding, right? Tell me you’re kidding. A bacon bowl. A _bacon bowl_. You seriously want that?”

Dean spreads his arms out. “Uh, duh?”

Thankfully, Ellen comes out then with both of their burgers, saving Castiel from having to answer. She gives Dean a pointed look before placing his beer in front of him as well. “Thank you, Ellen,” he says, smiling brightly.

“Yeah, yeah,” she mutters, “just remember that Cas is driving you home.”

Dean’s grin stretches. “Cas’ll take care of me. Won’t you, Cas?”

Instead of responding, he reaches out for his burger and takes a bite. Dean reaches out for his burger, too, but instead of picking it up, he takes the bun off and grabs the pieces of bacon on top. Castiel watches as Dean takes the bacon and tries to wrap it around the burger in a parody of a bowl. “You’re ridiculous,” he points out.

“You say it like it’s news.”

Castiel glares at him. “Are you seriously talking with food in your mouth?”

Almost nervous, Dean swallows. “No…?”

“You’re ridiculous,” he says again.

Dean smiles. “You like it.”

He just shakes his head.

 

* * *

 

This was a bad idea. This was a _really_ bad idea, and Castiel never should have come up with it. How stupid of him.

It started once they’d finished their burgers and Dean had a good beer or four in him. “I don’t want to go home yet,” he’d told Castiel, sinking back into the leather of the passenger’s seat. “Home sucks. And I’m not tired. Let’s go for a ride, Cas. Take me out somewhere, asshole.”

Shaking his head, exhausted but amused, Castiel had indulged in Dean’s drunken desires. He doesn’t know what compelled him to do it, but for some reason he’d decided to take the twenty minute drive to the lake they used to go to as kids. It had been to be a good place to fish, but after some time, they’d given that dream up and used it to swim in instead. What Castiel never realized, though, is how beautiful the place looked in the night.

There’s a gazebo a little ways before the dock, and though it once might have been sturdy and clean and white, it was now covered with vines and leaves that crawled up the sides, and what little you could see of the white looked peeled away or covered in dirt. It still had a charm to it, though, Cas thought, like maybe it belonged next to a fairytale cottage in the middle of the woods. The dock itself hadn’t changed much, but he assumed it wasn’t as sturdy as it once was— no one had probably touched it in years. In the field surrounding the area, there were groups of random white flowers that looked to be both daisies and baby’s breath. From above, the moon’s light turned the flowers a light shade of blue, and Castiel smiled, enjoying the scene before him.

They find themselves lying out on the dock. To his surprise, it holds both of their weight and doesn’t even sway slightly as they adjust their positions to try and get comfortable.

“This is… This is nice,” Dean says, folding his arms over his stomach.

Castiel hums in agreement, mentally trying to connect the stars together. He wishes, suddenly, that he’d taken more time to study astronomy when Dean got obsessed with it when they were fourteen. (“Astriferous,” Dean had said as they sat in his backyard, gazing up at the stars.

Castiel remembers looking over, remembers staring at the freckles that crossed along the bridge of Dean’s nose and thinking that they were far more interesting than the stars in the sky. “What does that mean?”

“It means ‘bearing stars,’” he’d replied, smirking as though he’d found something funny before glancing back up. “Like being made of stars or something. I found it when I was looking up constellation diagrams for each season. I thought you’d like it.” He had paused then. “I used to think you were made of stars.”

“You did?” Castiel laughed, shaking his head.

Dean’s voice had been soft. “Well, yeah. For a while, though, I used to think that you were an angel. Mom used to tell me all the time that angels were watching over me. I always thought that you were mine.”

He’d stopped breathing, unsure of what to say. When he exhaled again, he asked, “So how do you go from angels to stars?”

“I don’t know. They’re both supposed to be something larger than life, right?”

“But angels are biblical and stars are… scientific. I don’t…” Castiel trailed off, huffing.

Grinning, Dean said, “Okay, fine, angels didn’t work because I always thought that you were out of this universe.”

Castiel frowned. “I’m not sure if that’s a pun or a flirtation, but in either case, you’re an asshole.”

He’d never told Dean, though, that it was him that Castiel thought was made out of stars.)

“We don’t do things like this anymore,” Castiel says, glancing over at Dean who’s still looking up.

Dean makes a noncommittal noise. “Do what?”

“Go out,” he says. “Do something. Do _anything_. We’ve been cooped up inside our apartment so long I think we’ve forgotten how to survive outside of it. What do we even _do_ anymore?”

Beside him, Dean starts laughing. “We do things. You work at the record shop and the coffee shop and I work at the garage and we hang out with Jo and Charlie and Benny. We go to school and we do art projects and I don’t even complain anymore when you leave pencils scattered around all over the place, so that’s got to count for something.”

“But when is the last time that we went out, just the two of us, and did something?”

“…Right now?”

Groaning, Castiel covers his face with his hands. “Not right now, idiot. I’m talking about before today.”

“We drove out to Kansas together. Just the two of us.” At this, Dean gives him a hopeful grin.

Castiel narrows his eyes. “You are entirely missing the point. Driving down to Kansas was _for Sam_.” He shakes his head, turning back to stare up at the stars again. “When’s the last time we had a date night?”

“D-date night?” Dean sputters, instantly sitting up so he can get a better view of Castiel. “When— what? We… Date night? I don’t—“

“Do you have a problem with our date nights, Dean Winchester?” Castiel smirks at him, and Dean scowls back at him.

Lying back against the dock, Dean sighs. “Date nights. I don’t have a problem with our date nights. I just wasn’t aware that they were date nights.”

Snorting, Castiel says, “What did you want me to call it, then? ‘Those one nights that we do things people in relationships do without actually being in a relationship?’” He crosses his arms behind his head, chuckling to himself.

“I… I don’t know.”

Helpful.

Dean’s fingers start moving— restless— tapping a steady rhythm on the backs of his hands. “Hey, Cas? If there was a shooting star, what would you wish for?”

“You’d think that it’s sappy,” Castiel says after giving it some thought.

“Would not.”

“Would too.”

Shifting so that he’s lying on his side, Dean places his face next to Castiel’s. “C’mon. It can’t be that bad.”

“I— No.”

Dean moves up to his elbows, now leaning over Castiel. How he manages not to reach out and touch Dean is a mystery all on its own. “ _No_? What do you mean _no_? Seriously. If you tell me yours I’ll tell you mine. It can’t be that bad.”

“It is,” he insists.

“Please?”

Sighing deeply, Castiel covers his face with his arm. “I would probably wish for something stupid, anyway. Like the two of us being happy for the rest of our lives or something equally outrageous.”

Dean doesn’t answer. The silence he leaves behind stretches out, and Castiel has to move his arm away from his eyes to make sure that Dean didn’t somehow slip away without being heard. “That’s, uh, that’s not outrageous. That actually sounds… really nice.”

“So what would you wish for?” he asks.

“Oh, well, I wouldn’t really— you know how I am, Cas— I don’t think—“

Castiel glares at him. “Dean.”

“I don’t know. Really. Probably the same. Or something similar.” He hesitates, and then quietly adds on, “I’d probably wish that you never got tired of me.”

That’s not what he was expecting. Not even close. “Dean… Why would you think that I’d get tired of you?”

“You deserve a whole shit ton better than me. And I’m kind of boring, in case you didn’t notice,” Dean points out, looking out over the lake to avoid eye contact. Castiel looks out, too, trying to see if he can see the same thing, but when nothing pops out in front of him he gives up looking. He’s so close to Dean right now, their arms almost touching, and he realizes suddenly how cold he is.

But he knows Dean, knows when to push him and when to back off, when something makes him uncomfortable and when something makes him happy. Castiel aims for a lighter mood, jokingly saying, “You’ve been boring for years. Get with the program here.”

Laughing wistfully, Dean shakes his head. “Right, of course.” After a few moments, he moves again to lie down once more. “Do you remember which one is the big dipper?”

“Do I…?” Confused, he glances over at his best friend, only to see that Dean’s hands are shaking. Cas looks back up at the sky, understanding that this is still part of the distraction. “Yeah. It’s that one right there,” he says, pointing.

They spend the next twenty minutes quizzing each other about the stars. There’s a certain calmness that settles over his bones as he sits there pointing up at the sky. Something familiar comes over him, and it reminds him of the good parts of his childhood, before his mom died and before his dad started to take his anger out on his only son. It’s only after a lightning bug drifts past his head that Castiel notices that the both of them have fallen into silence.

It was a bad idea. He never should’ve done it.

Heart lodged in his throat, Castiel rolls onto his side and, before he can regret it, presses his lips against Dean's.

There's a muffled, shocked sound, Dean freezing beneath him, and then there's hands gripping his sweater, strong, sure hands, hands that don't lie. Castiel could nearly sob from the overwhelming amount of relief that spreads throughout his body.

They spend what feels like forever kissing and he's pretty sure there's some groping in there, too, but eventually Dean pulls back, eyes wide and bright, and whispers, "Take me home."

They stumble back to the car, pulling and shoving and kissing and laughing, and Castiel doesn't think he's ever been this happy in his entire life. Adrenaline thrums under his skin the entire ride home, and he has to push Dean's hand away once or twice to get it off his thigh to avoid driving into a ditch, but it's worth it because Dean's smile is radiant.

He warns Dean to be quiet as they enter the house which was, in hindsight, probably not the best idea, because Dean keeps almost tripping over things and Castiel can feel his laughter against his neck on several occasions. Getting Dean into his room without waking anyone is a feat in itself— Castiel thinks that he should get a gold medal for it.

As soon as they're in the room, Dean starts kissing him again— soft and sweet and slow— and Castiel stops thinking.

In its own way, it's good.

It’s also horribly awkward.

Dean tries for being sexy— he can tell by the way Dean is glancing at Castiel through his eyelashes, a look he's seen at bars and restaurants, trying to pick up numerous men and women— but he messes it up right off the bat by getting his hand caught in his shirt sleeve. He then spends a good two minutes trying to get his hand out, but Castiel finds it amusing, effortlessly slipping his own shirt off.

"All right, show off," Dean teases, rolling his eyes.

Castiel smiles, then, eyes bright, and then steps into his personal space. "I couldn't help it. I live for your suffering."

"Asshole," Dean mutters, shoving him back a little, but when Castiel's fingers move to the button of his jeans, Dean lets him.

Castiel is so, so gentle, fingers reverent in their journey. There was no way Castiel has earned this, no way he deservs the tenderness of skin beneath his fingertips. But Dean is allowing him to touch, and he's never felt... _something_ — his brain tricking him, stupidly, into thinking that it was love (as if it could be something else)— as strongly as he did then, in that moment.

It's awkward and clumsy and limbs knock together and at one point their teeth clank and their foreheads bump together but it's still the best Castiel has ever had, the best he will ever have.

Castiel goes between smiles and seriousness and honest to God giddiness, drunk on the taste of Dean, the rush of Dean pressed against him. There's laughter between them, secret smiles, hushed confessions that neither of them would remember later but mean all the world to them in those few precious moments they have together. "This is— This is actually happening," he says at one point, perched between Dean's legs.

"Not if you keep laughing, asshole."

It only causes Castiel to laugh more.

His fingers trace along Dean's skin, make themselves familiar with the line of his jaw, the curve of his shoulder, the dip of his collarbone. Lips follow after fingers, adoring kisses pressed against his neck, along his hips, on the tips of his fingers.

The way they move together is achingly beautiful, a story written along the seams of their lips about one boy who loved a boy so much he thought his heart would explode from how much he felt for him and another one about a boy who deserved ~~stars constellations galaxies~~ _universes_ but thinks the boy he loves is worth far more. The story extends to the tips of their fingers, making it's way down to their toes, and the both of them are so tightly entwined that Castiel stops wondering where his story ends and where Dean begins. The dull throb of what could’ve been and what would never be pulses in his chest, consumes his mind, spreads through every part of his body.

When Dean comes, painting his spend between their stomachs, Castiel thinks, oddly, of exploding stars. Half out of his mind, his lips move forward to brush against a collection of freckles on Dean's shoulder and wonders, not for the first time, how Dean could've ever thought that Castiel was a star when it's so obvious that Dean could be nothing else.

 

* * *

 

The next day Castiel wakes up a little too aware of the body half on top of his and very seriously aware of the fact that his bladder is screaming at him. “Dean,” he mumbles, groping for what he hopes is Dean’s arm. “Get off me.”

There’s a groan and then: “You get off me.”

Peeling his eyes open, he glares up at Dean. “That doesn’t even make sense.”

Dean, seemingly oblivious to Castiel’s inner turmoil, nuzzles into his chest. “You make no sense,” he retorts, and it becomes blatantly obvious that Castiel is going to have to force Dean off of him.

“Get off,” he tries one more time, but when Dean does nothing more than frown, Castiel takes matters into his own hands, taking hold of Dean’s shoulders and shoving them the opposite way while he wiggles out from underneath him. Dean makes a noise that sounds like dissatisfaction but Castiel ignores him in favor of going to the bathroom.

When he comes out, feeling slightly more awake, Dean is stretching his limbs, still lying on his stomach. He flinches as he relaxes and, okay, maybe Castiel feels a little bit bad at that, but not bad enough to stop him from reaching over and slapping Dean’s thigh.

“Fuck!” Dean twists around, glaring at him. “What the fuck, Cas?”

Grinning, Castiel rummages through his clothes, trying to find his boxers. “Sore?” he teases, winking over at Dean as he slips on a shirt.

With a sigh, Dean rolls onto his back. He’s _pouting_ , of all things, and Castiel just barely resists the urge to call him adorable. “Yeah, asshole, I am.”

Castiel slips his jeans on and makes his way back to the bed. “Sorry, dear,” he says, pressing a kiss to Dean’s forehead. “Mm, I think I smell French toast. Get your lazy ass dressed and come downstairs.”

“Alright, Mom.”

He rolls his eyes, making his way back to the door. On the floor by the door is a pair of folded socks that Castiel knows for sure aren’t his, but he picks them up anyway. While Dean makes his way towards the bathroom, Castiel puts them on, smiling at the warmth it brings him. He’s pretty sure Dean won’t notice, anyway.

 

* * *

 

Despite the way they acted in the morning, Castiel decides it’s best to stay clear of Dean as much as he possibly can. Instead of watching TV with the Winchester males, he helps Mary out in the backyard with her garden. When Dean comes out at noon with two sandwiches and a smile on his face, it takes all of Castiel’s willpower not to run, hating that he doesn't know, exactly, where they stand. He forces himself to stay put, smile back, to get rid of the nervous feeling that’s causing his skin to itch.

It’s not until after dinner that Dean seeks him out again, pausing by the couch in the living room where he’s blankly staring at the TV screen, not even pretending to watch whatever Adam has on. “Hey, Cas. Wanna go with me to buy some ice cream?”

He opens his mouth to tell him no but then thinks better of it, realizing he’s got nothing better going for him. “Sure.” The answering smile he gets in return is worth it.

They don’t speak again until they get into the car, and even then it’s just, “Ice cream?”

“Yes, ice cream. Sue me. You looked miserable, I wanted ice cream. Why not?”

When the Realization— with capital letters, because Castiel is sure that this is the biggest thing that will ever happen to him in his life— hits him, they’re on the way back from the grocery store and he’s staring at Dean’s hands tapping an unknown rhythm against the steering wheel. It’s so _obvious_ , too, and Castiel wonders how he never saw it until now. Before he can stop himself, he blurts out, “Dean?”

A grunt is his only response.

“I love you.”

Nothing. That’s it, that’s the end of the world as he knows it. He can’t hear anything anymore— the sound of the Impala’s steady engine is gone, the music that had been playing at a low volume becomes nothing. The only thing he is aware of is how painfully loud his heartbeat is in his chest, his ears, pounding pounding pounding away. There’s that, and then—

Dean stops abruptly, looks over at Castiel. “I—“

But Castiel can see it anyways. He doesn’t want to, but with Dean’s face blank, he peeks, just to be sure. Dean’s hands are completely still on the steering wheel. “It’s fine,” he insists. “Forget I said it.” Sudden shame slamming down on his shoulders, he glances out the window. He’s so _stupid_. So what if they’d made love— can it even be called that? Was it just sex? Did they just have a quick fuck after a few beers?

He’s an idiot. Of _course_ it didn’t mean the same to Dean.

“Cas—” Dean tries once, placing a hand on his shoulder.

“I said forget it,” Castiel snaps, closing his eyes.

The rest of the ride back is worse, both of them sitting in complete silence except for the radio, which can barely be heard anyway. It’s different from the one that they’d shared just minutes before, but that was also before Castiel opened his mouth and ruined everything. The tension surrounding them reminds him of being inside an interrogation room at just-barely eighteen, trying to explain to the cops the damage that had been done to his skin. He feels the phantom itch of it now— the scar on his left shoulder, a single, jagged line from one of the knives that used to be in Castiel’s kitchen. It had been the last straw, it had been the moment that Dean had taken matters into his own hands and said _this is enough_.

He’d hated the process of it all, though. By eighteen, he had become used to the beatings. They’d started somewhere between eleven and twelve, and he had at least six years to adjust to the idea, to stop protesting when it happened. He can remember, clearly, the last time it had happened, the strange, unfamiliar burn in his shoulder that _tore_ each time he moved. Climbing up to Dean’s room using the lattice on the side of the Winchester home had been hell.

Having to show Dean was bad— hearing his best friend’s sharp inhale when he saw the damage was worse.

“Cas, what the _fuck_?” he’d growled, meeting his gaze in the bathroom mirror.

Castiel shrugged, hissing when the movement reminded him that, essentially, he’d been stabbed. “I messed up again. It’s not that big of a deal.”

“ _Not that big of a deal_? You’re still bleeding. Fuck that load of bullshit,” Dean muttered, going back into his room.

He had waited for a few seconds, and then asked, “What are you doing?”

“We’re going to take you to the hospital. Maybe Mom can talk some sense into you.”

After that, it had been a blur of stitches (“It’ll still leave a scar, though,” the nurse had told him. He didn’t care; what was one more?) and blood and white walls. At some point, Mary had come in with Dean in tow, and he sat still and listened as Mary chewed him out, nodding when he knew it was appropriate to. Dean had remained silent, stony, refusing to even look at him.

Of course, once the hospital had found out what his wound was from, they went after his dad. Before he could even get out of the hospital Mary had come by to tell him that his father was arrested and once he got discharged, he had to go down to the police station to give a statement.

It had been bad having to go to the hospital and it had been bad having to go to the police station, but the most terrible thing out of the whole ordeal was recounting what had happened. Each beating he had taken laid bare for strangers to hear. Cas remembers refusing to talk unless someone was in there with him, someone familiar, someone he cared for. He remembers the way Dean flinched as if he was hearing it for the first time, as if he was just then learning the extent of all the damage, the way his hands had moved from tight fists to gripping the edge of the table to being tightly clasped together, trying to calm the slight tremors. At the time, he’d wanted to tell Dean to just get out, but he had been more than selfish then, scared of being alone and scared of being without his best friend, his anchor, his only support.

The car ride now reminds him of the urge to tell Dean to just give up on him before it was too late.

When they get back to the house, Cas completely avoids any offers for ice cream, completely avoids going into Dean’s room. Dean glances back at him when he stops by the guest bedroom door from his place at the bottom of the stairs, but doesn’t say anything either. The bed inside is cold and unforgiving, unused to the shape of bodies lying on top of it after so many months of disuse, just like it had been the first night he tried to sleep on it. He tosses and turns for hours before he gives up, closing his eyes in hopes of something to help calm him down.

He does not fall asleep.


	3. tres

**Part Three: Freaking Out is Okay, but Don't be a Fucking Wimp**

 

“Charlie, I fucked up big time.”

It's the day after graduation, and Cas hasn't talked to him at all within the past few hours. It's getting to the point that Mary has noticed and Sam had even opened his mouth, looking as though he wanted to say something but stopping himself just in time.

On the other end of the phone, Charlie sighs. "Define fucked up."

"Cas told me that he loved me last night," he admitted, biting his knuckle before putting his hand down.

"How does that equate to fucking up? I thought this was a good thing. Isn't that what you wanted?"

He looks down at the ground, shifting on his bed.

Charlie sucks in a breath. "What happened?"

"I didn't say anything," he whispers, the sudden tightness in his throat not allowing him a higher volume. "I just fucking _looked_ at him like the idiot I am."

He can clearly picture Charlie in his head, pinching at the bridge of her nose, when he hears her sigh on the other end of the line. "Talk about feeling rejected." She pauses, and then adds, "It's not too late to try and fix it."

"It is so far past trying to fix it," he says, snorting. When he continues, his voice is softer. "He won't even look at me, Charlie."

“Where is he now?” she asks.

Dean frowns. So, okay, he’s sitting alone in his childhood bedroom avoiding everyone, but that doesn’t mean that he’s sulking. He has no reason to sulk. His parents are downstairs— Mary cooking dinner, John sitting in the living room with Adam— and Sam is in his room, probably trying to get a hold of Jess, _again_ , as if he could talk her back into college at the last second. But Cas? He doesn’t know. The last he saw him was at breakfast this morning, glaring down at a cup of coffee. “I don’t know,” he tells her.

“Well, _find him_ ,” Charlie insists. “Talk to him. Stop being a wuss, and get your ass out there and have a grown up conversation for once in your goddamn life. Remember my guidebook, Dean? Three simple, easy steps. _Remember them_.”

Dean nods and then feels stupid when he remembers that Charlie can’t see him. “Okay. Yeah. I can do that.”

He can do that. He will.

“Do you have an idea of where he might be?”

A glance at the window shows that it’s raining, but he knows a bit of rain has never stopped Cas before. “Yeah,” he tells her, “I think so.”

 

* * *

 

So, yeah, he told himself that he would talk to Cas and get everything straightened out.

Or, at least, he _would_ do that, if he could find Cas. Dean asks his mom first, just to be sure before he leaves, but when Mary says that she hasn’t seen him anywhere, he starts searching the house up and down. When that proves to be useless, he gets in his car and starts driving. It really doesn’t surprise him when, five minutes later, he pulls up to the park they used to spend a lot of time at when they were in elementary school and sees a figure sitting on a bench.

Groaning and internally complaining about getting wet, he makes his way to the bench. “Cas?”

The person— which Dean can now clearly see is Cas— shuffles a little but doesn’t say anything.

Dean huffs, settling down on the bench next to him. “Cas, can we at least talk about this?”

Pulling his knees up to his chest, Cas asks, “What is there to talk about?” But he’s still avoiding eye contact with Dean, and he hates that.

(“Cas, you stare too much.”

He’d rolled his eyes. “Dean, you complain too much.”

“Hey! I never said that I didn’t like it!” Dean protested.)

His arms spread open as if displaying something grand. He feels like it’s a lie, though— the park is run down and unstable and barren and empty, a far cry from what it was when they were children. “You know that I have… _commitment_ issues. I don’t— Cas, you have to understand that I—”

“That you _what_?” Cas snaps, glaring down at his knees.

“I _panicked_ , Cas. Is that so hard to believe?” Dean means to snap back at him, tries to be angry too, but instead the words come out with a sleepy sort of quality. He’s heard this tone of voice before, the sound of someone (Cas, sitting on the closed toilet lid, head hanging low as Dean bandaged up bruised knuckles; Cas, fighting off pained noises as Dean dug out a small shard of glass in his palm with tweezers; Cas, trying to be brave) giving up.

Cas snorts, finally, _finally_ , glancing over at him. It isn’t the look Dean wants, filled with the hate that’s written all over his face as it is now. “So the first sign of someone caring about you is when you run off, right? Isn’t that what happened with Cassie?”

That’s a low blow, especially for Cas, who doesn’t say mean things unless he’s teasing Dean. This isn’t a tease, though. This is _anger_ , and Dean knows that, recognizes it, feels it begin to bubble up under his own skin as well. “You know what? Fuck you,” he says, shaking his head and standing up. “I just— _Fuck you_ , you pretentious asshole. You don’t know shit.”

He starts back towards the car, not noticing Cas scrambling up off the bench as he moves. “I’ll see you at the house, Cas,” he says without turning around. He’s too pissed right now to care about it, but later he knows he’s going to hate himself for getting into the Impala while he’s wet and without anything to put down on the seat ( _stop lying_ , he berates himself, _when the only thing you'd regret is leaving Cas behind_ ). Slamming the car door once he gets in feels like a finality, feels like letting go of one thing and letting something darker replace it.

Standing next to the bench, completely drenched, Cas stares at him, an expression somewhere between shock and anger. Dean ignores it.

“Where’s Cas?” Mary asks when he comes into the house by himself a little later, dripping onto the laminate wood flooring.

Dean slips off his shoes, leaves them by the front door. “Couldn’t find him,” he mutters, and leaves it at that.

 

* * *

 

(Cas comes in twenty minutes later, shivering and soaked to the bone, moving slowly and sluggish. Looking almost tired, he pulls off layers one by one— shoes, socks, jacket, shirt, pants— and by the time he's down to his boxers Mary is waiting with a warm towel. "Where were you?" she asks.

Shrugging, he tells her, "Just out walking. I n-needed some time to— to think, s'all."

She fusses over him for a little while longer, tucking the towel around his arms, and he thanks her quietly before making a beeline to the downstairs bathroom. As soon as he's out of the room, Mary glances up towards the top of the stairs, and Dean slowly moves back towards his room, pretending like he hadn't been standing behind the wall, waiting for the sound of Cas's return.)

 

* * *

 

The last day they’re there, everyone seems to take notice to the big huge ball of tension between Dean and Cas and try their best to keep them separated. Cas spends most of the day in the living room, with Adam mostly but also with John, and sometimes when Dean walks into the kitchen to get something he can hear them talking and laughing. At one point, Dean stops just in time to see Cas smiling, a large, toothy grin Dean only sees when Cas is genuinely happy. It steals his breath away for a few moments, and he _hates_ it, because no one he’s mad at should look that beautiful.

(And _no_ , Dean doesn’t think that Cas is beautiful, because that’s just ridiculous.)

Sam entertains him for the most part, and they both sit up in his room and play Mario Kart. Dean’s pretty sure that Sam feels bad for him because he lets Dean win three races in a row and that never happens. At one point Sam tries to bring it up, but Dean doesn’t want to talk about it. It’s ridiculous, because Cas and him were never a thing, really, but he still feels like it is. He just brushes off Sam’s attempts of conversation with a grin and a promise to kick his ass.

When it’s time to go, Mary hugs Cas first, folding him into her arms the way that she usually does with him and Sam and Adam. At one point, though, Dean has to look away because Cas is _clinging_ onto her, clutching her against him like it’s the last time he’ll ever see her. When Cas pulls back there are unshed tears in his eyes, and Dean’s heart aches with the reminder that Cas has never had a mom, not really, but the trail of thought is lost when his mom pulls him towards her.

“You take care of that boy,” she whispers into his ear. “He’s got a whole lotta sad in him, you know, but I’ve seen the way he looks at you. You make him so happy, Dean. Don’t forget that.”

She leans out of his embrace, placing her hands on his cheeks. “Are you gonna cry again, Mom?” he asks, and she laughs, shaking her head, even as tears begin to make their way down her cheeks.

“Me?” she questions. “No, I would never. I’m just really, _really_ happy right now. That’s all. You two stay safe and call me when you get home, alright?”

Dean nods, smiling at her before picking up his suitcase and moving before she can change her mind and lock him up in his room where he can’t escape.

The trip home lasts two and a half days because they keep fighting and because Dean refuses to drive because he needs to sleep and Cas won’t get in the drivers seat  (Dean doesn’t remember why, anymore). Between small, sporadic arguments, there’s nothing but the sound of the Impala on the road and the breaths they take. The first silence that had crossed between them, Dean had tried to turn on the radio but Cas had reached over and turned it off, not saying a word, and then shifted slightly in his seat before facing the window.

He doesn’t try to turn it on after that.

 

* * *

 

Back in their shitty, run down apartment, things don’t go back to normal like he had half-hoped they would. On the first day, they both stumble around each other trying to get things done, and once Cas finishes his laundry he retreats to his room and doesn’t come out.

The second morning Dean wakes up to a half empty coffee pot and a piece of paper held on the fridge by a magnet (it’s one of their letter magnets, the ‘S’ that’s missing from ‘CAS’) that simply states:

_went to the studio -C_

as if that puts all of Dean’s worries to rest. He shakes it off though, opting instead to call Charlie to make plans with her. She gives him shit about Cas (“It was a three step plan! Where did you go wrong? Did you freak out too much or something? It was basically foolproof!”) but then kindly distracts him by talking about her new art partner, Kevin Tran, who is much more successful than the last one. After she’s done talking about Kevin, she starts talking about Jo Harvelle, who’s apparently really _dreamy_. Dean can forgive her talking about someone he’s known since childhood if that means avoiding the mention of Cas.

He begins to immerse himself in work again, putting in extra hours at the garage. Every time he comes home it’s to an empty apartment and the feeling of being in a too big space, which is ridiculous because their apartment isn’t actually all that big to begin with, having only three (small) rooms and one bathroom. Even sitting in their living room, which is overcrowded with furniture, the space he’s sitting in seems too vast, too strange.

Each morning he’ll wake up with the coffee pot filled up to a different spot, and he’ll stop drinking it only to gauge how much Cas is drinking. It’s a bit disturbing, almost, how much Dean notices his absence in even the smallest, tiniest things.

About a week and a half in, Dean realizes that he hasn’t seen Cas in _days_. Usually that would worry him, but he knows that Cas is still here at least in the mornings because of the missing coffee and still, each morning, a note will be hanging on the fridge or sitting out on the counter telling Dean where he’s gone for the day (usually the record shop or the coffee shop where Cas alternatives shifts between, but occasionally at the studio, too, and once he even mentions the gallery, but Dean hasn’t thought about that in ages).

Once he realizes it, he decides to stay up and wait until Cas comes home. He sits at their crappy kitchen table that he’s been meaning to fix for months and leans back in his chair with a beer in his hand and the TV on as a background noise. When midnight passes and goes, with still no sign of Cas, he decides to wait just a little bit longer.

He stays up until three, and, when nothing happens, he grudgingly goes to bed.

Dean is woken up a few hours later at six when he hears the front door opening. He doesn’t get out of bed, just listens, as Cas moves down the small hallway into his own bedroom. There’s movement, the sound of things being shuffled around, before he hears footsteps moving to the kitchen. There’s the distinctive noise of liquid filling a cup (twice within twenty minutes) before footsteps make their way back to the door. Under usual circumstances the noises would blend right in to their everyday lifestyle, but in the silence of their apartment it sounds so, so loud.

He wonders how he ever missed it before.

 

* * *

 

Things go bad the day Dean decides to paint. It’s two weeks after Sam’s graduation, and Dean’s beginning to feel an itch in his fingertips, the one that he usually gets when it’s been a while since he’s tried to create something. He usually prefers to make something out of clay, enjoys how easily he can mold it into something new, but he doesn’t have a pottery wheel in his apartment and the note that Cas left said that he’d be at the studio, and though Dean had wanted to see him a few nights ago he doesn’t want to see him, not really.

Painting, as it turns out, works fine too.

There’s enough still left over from Cas bringing supplies home, so he grabs a few bottles and fills up a few plastic cups up with water and heads into the spare room, where he sets up an easel next to the stool in the spare room and gets to work.

He tries not to think of how _white_ the room looks covered up in sheets (after Cas had painted the last time, Dean had taken the liberty of sticking old sheets up across the walls with pins and over the floors, just as a safety precaution) and instead attempts to focus on the feeling of a paintbrush in his hand— the best thing he’s felt in a long time, the power to make anything right there in his grasp— and the colors splashed along the canvas.

It takes him a while to realize that he’s stopped and once he has he snaps himself out of his daze, eyes moving back to the canvas with renewed focus.

Dean is only vaguely aware of the paintbrush falling to the ground.

Through the mass swirl of colors, he manages to pinpoint a figure— a stranger, Cas, _himself_?— in the abyss. Once he manages to figure it out (the person is, for the most part, shades of brown and white mixed together) he realizes that the brightest part of the painting—

(red, _blood_ — bleeding, fuck, Cas is _bleeding_ — splattered across the shoulders)

— reminds him of blood and Dean takes a step back, knocking over the stool and the palette and getting paint everywhere, but that doesn’t matter because—

(“You’re fine, Cas, everything is fine.”

Cas trying to look back at the damage on his shoulder, Cas grimacing when turning his head stretches the skin there. “I’m bleeding.”

“Yeah, no shit. Fuck, _Cas_ , why didn’t you _stop_ him?”

“I don’t _know_. What was I supposed to do? He had—”

“He had what, Cas?”

“He had a knife. What was I supposed to do? Try to block him and hope he didn’t cut off my hand instead?”

Screaming— that’s what this feels like, even if nothing is coming out of this throat. There’s that, and then, “ _Fuck_ ,” when the bleeding won’t stop no matter how much pressure Dean tries to put against the wound.

“Dean?” There’s a noise there, a sound that sounds like his own heart shattering in his chest. No one should ever sound that terrified. “I’m scared.”)

— his heart is somewhere in his throat or maybe that’s just every meal he’s eaten in the past two days, because he’s going to _puke_ , he never should’ve come in this room in the first place, he—

He closes his eyes. He’ll deal with it later, he tells himself. He can do that.

The mess and the painting go untouched, and Dean doesn’t go in the room again.

 

* * *

 

He calls Sam up a few hours later, desperate for something, anything, that will give him the excuse of leaving the apartment for more than a few hours at a time. “How about that road trip?”

 

* * *

 

"Where's Cas?" Sam asks when he finally pulls up.

"Not here."

He doesn't know if its the tone of his voice, but Sam doesn't say anything in response.

 

* * *

 

The road trip only lasts two days before Sam pulls over on some deserted highway in what Dean thinks might be Montana. He doesn’t remember, though, and he keeps forgetting small things but he welcomes it, too. It’s a nice distraction. "Okay. _Spill_. Why isn't Cas here?"

"We had a disagreement."

Sam glances over at him. "About?"

"He— he has feelings for me, and I—" Dean cuts off, stares down at his lap.

"You— what? Told him that you couldn’t handle it?” Sam asks, raising an eyebrow at him.

Dean looks down at his hands, curling his fingers into fists and then releasing again, over and over. “That’s the thing,” he says, shaking his head. “I didn’t say anything. I fucked up. I fucked up so bad, Sam.”

His brother is silent for a moment, and then: “When’s the last time you talked to him?”

“When we were on the drive back to Chicago, I think.”

Sam sighs. “We’re not going to talk about him unless you want to, but if you don’t talk to him when you get back I will personally go to Chicago and kick both of your asses myself until you two finally admit you’re idiots. Understood?”

“Yeah,” he says, resigned. “Understood.”

 

* * *

 

They spend the fourth of July sitting on some park bench in Colorado. Sam’s into it, eyes lighting up with each new firework, but Dean hardly notices the bright flashes in the sky. There’s a lack of commentary that he gets each year from Cas, who enjoys the light display but hates being silent during them.

On the way back to their room, Cas texts him. Curling up closer to the passenger side’s window, he slides the screen of his phone over to check it.

 

_> > Watching fireworks isn’t the same._

__

_< < no. it’s not_

 

* * *

 

The trip itself is fine. They don't stop for long, mostly only for food or rest or because Sam heard something about this or that and wanted to check it out. Dean gets dragged into museums and through gardens and this is all things that Cas would like, he realizes with a sharp pain in his chest. Dean keeps telling Sam that the only plus side to any of this is the restaurants that they’re going to and the new food, but sometimes Sam will realize Dean’s not with him any longer and will come to find him sitting at a bench or staring at flowers, distant in his actions.

A few days in, Dean stops at a craft store and buys a sketchbook and charcoal, and he sits in cheap, dirty motel rooms creating deformed lines on paper that have no rhyme or reason. Eventually, though, he begins to pick out wild, tousled hair, and others he will find a pair of eyes staring back at him, and when the pages become filled too quickly, he hands it off to Sam and tells him to do something with it before he drives himself insane. (Years later, Sam will give it back to him, and he'll find that each page isn't a scribbly mess like he'd thought it was but, instead, just _Cas_.)

Being on the road is relaxing, though. There’s something about sitting in the Impala, all that strength under the palms of his hands, that calms the frayed nerves in his body. It’s only temporary, though— the open roads put his mind to rest but motel rooms make him feel like a caged animal.

Sam helps, some. He keeps to his word and doesn’t even mention the missing companion in their party, though sometimes Dean opens his mouth and wants to say something but then closes it later and decides against it.

(Eventually, though, that idea will go to shit, too. “Cas would’ve been all over this,” Dean tells Sam as they walk through yet another museum. This one has a planetarium, which is more Dean’s interest, really, but Cas enjoys history, too, and Dean’s pretty sure that he’s converted him to astronomy somewhere in the past twenty odd years they’ve known each other.

Once the words are out of his mouth, though, he freezes, looking over at Sam with wide, terrified eyes, but all Sam does is make a small noise of confirmation and Dean settles.

It becomes easier, then, to mention Cas in passing, little comments about how this is his favorite type of flower or that’s his favorite meal or Cas does this and Cas does that.

The smalls comments turn into confessions, little ones, about his feelings. There’s got to be something ironic about the fact that Dean doesn’t have a problem talking about his emotions to anyone _besides_ the person he has feelings about. It doesn’t stop him from admitting that he’s an idiot.

For the most part, Sam just listens. At first, Dean isn’t sure how he feels about the silence coming from his brother, but he starts to appreciate it over time. Sam isn’t looking for sappy confessions or love ballads or something equally ridiculous. His brother is just letting him speak, and if Dean’s smiles are a little more soft, a little more grateful, Sam doesn’t mention it.

Dean breaks up silence in the car with stories. Some are ones from childhood— chasing Sam around the house, trying to help Sam win a game of chess against Cas. They’re things that Sam already knows, but he just nods his head or makes an affirming noise and listens. The stories start changing— Cas’ perfectionism and the fights that’s started, the one time Cas tried to hook him up with Benny, of all people, and how that friendship started up between the three of them. Sam laughs at the latter and rolls his eyes at the former, and at one point Dean jokes and asks if he should be paying Sam for his services.

“I’m just glad you’re talking, Dean,” he admits.

It stuns Dean into silence.)

They talk about Jess, too. Sam admits they broke up weeks ago, but he doesn’t sound as distraught about it as Dean would’ve thought, so he leaves it alone. They both go out to bars on several nights as if they’re looking to pick someone up. Dean’s almost eager for it, the first two times, but once he realizes that what he’s trying to find (blue eyes, dark hair) isn’t there, he stops looking for it.

Sam, however, does eventually hook up with someone. The two of them go back to her place— her name is Madison, Dean thinks— and Dean gives him a pat on the back and a wide grin.

Later, though, he’ll sit in his small motel room and wonder what the hell he just let his brother go do. He doubts that Sam hasn’t had sex before, but _still_. His brother is barely eighteen, and Dean feels like he’s just signed him up for the army or something.

Before he can stop himself, he texts Cas. It was a one time occurrence, before, with Cas texting him. Dean had tried several times since then and Cas never texted back, but he's feeling a little desperate now.

  
****

_< < I just let sam go home with someone who looks like she could be in her early twenties_

_< < what did I just do_

 

_> > You idiot._

 

Surprised at a response, he jumps, and then checks the screen a few more times, just to be sure. He hesitates, then, because they haven’t talked in weeks, but he doesn’t want to ruin it, so he starts with something simple.

 

_< < how are you_

 

_> > I’m fine, Dean._

_< < I miss you_

 

There isn’t a response after that. He doesn’t expect one.

 

* * *

 

Dean drops Sam off at home three days later. He stays long enough for dinner, long enough for his mom to coddle him and fuss over the weight he hadn’t realized he lost, and the lack of sleep it looks like he’s getting, though he knows that much, at least. Sam looks away when she says that because he’s been stuck in a room with Dean for the past two weeks and he knows that Dean hasn’t been sleeping. His dreams are plagued by bloodstained skin and haunted eyes and the sound of yelling and screaming, which is what usually jolts him awake in the first place.

(The first time he woke up like that, Sam was leaning over him, hands placed on his shoulders. “You’re fine, Dean,” he’d said. “It’s just a bad dream, okay?” His brother had hugged him, and that was when Dean realized that the thing that was making everything blurry was tears, and that the feeling in his throat was leftover from screaming.

He’d wondered, then, if Cas ever felt like this when he woke up from those kinds of dreams.)

“I’m fine, Mom,” he says to her.

Mary’s eyes scan over his face, something sympathetic and gentle showing in them. “Of course you are, little soldier. Let me walk you to your car, at least.” He says his goodbyes to his dad and his brothers, and Mary walks beside him as he moves towards his car.

He hesitates, hand resting on the window, before he turns to her. “Thanks for letting me take gigantor away.”

“He needed it, I think.” She smiles at him, cupping his jaw with one hand. “Dean, I— I think you should talk to him.” Dean opens his mouth, about to protest, but she shakes her head. “Sweetheart, the last time you lost sleep the way you are now was in junior year when you were scared about Cas leaving you to go off to college in New York. He loves you, you know. I don’t see a lot of young people with that expression on their face, but I’ve seen it every single time he looks at you. I don’t think there’s anything that boy wouldn’t do for you.”

“Mom, I don’t think that—”

She cuts him off. “If you think that you’re going to open your mouth and lie to me about your feelings, then you are wasting your efforts. I saw the way you looked at him when you thought he wasn’t looking.”

“I know how I feel about Cas,” he cuts in. “I just don’t think he wants to talk to me.”

Raising an eyebrow, she adopts her typical _tell me now or you’re grounded for a year_ expression. He has to remind himself that she can’t really ground him anymore— there’s no reason that he should be scared of the face she’s making. (It's not like he ever got grounded in the first place, of course. The reason why he was never a problematic child was because of Cas, whose actions meant different things— a hand on his shoulder was _think about it first_ , a clenched fist was _stop talking before you make things worse_ , a light brush across the back of his hand was _you’re not alone in this_. Dean never got in trouble because not only would his parents have been pissed, but Cas would’ve kicked his ass for it.) “Why wouldn’t he want to talk to you?”

Dean sighs. “He told me he loved me. He told me he loved me out of nowhere and I didn't know what to say so I didn't say anything and I just—”

Her eyes squint as she assesses him again. “What I think,” she says, “is that you should go talk to him. A misunderstanding is a misunderstanding, and simple miscommunications can be solved, believe it or not.”

He smiles at her, soft, gentle. “Sam already threatened me if I didn’t talk to him. Charlie’s been bugging me about it too. I just don’t want to mess things up.”

“You’ve already messed them up,” she chides, but her answering grin is teasing.

“Thanks, Mom,” he grumbles, pulling her in for a hug.

Mary squeezes him, holding him against her a little longer than necessary, and when she pulls back her eyes are a little too bright. “Now go do what you do best. Fix it.”

 

* * *

 

Except he doesn’t go fix it.

He sits alone in his living room for a good day and a half before he decides to actually move, and even then all he does is transfer from the living room to the bathroom to the kitchen to his bedroom. The impending gallery showing date creeps up on him, and for the first time in his life he’s thankful that he’s done something ahead of time. He’d finished his half of the project months ago, at Cas’s insistence, and then left his friend to complete the project on his own.

He does, however, feel guilty about making Cas set them up on his own, but he bets that he’d gotten some sort of help.

Instead of worrying about it, he wallows in his pity on the couch, watching Netflix and eating junk food to pass his time when he isn’t working at the garage. The apartment remains empty and silent, and every time Dean walks into a new room he has to turn something on to fill the deafening silence in his head.

He doesn’t see Cas at all.

(Eventually, he stops going into the kitchen, opting to leave groceries, sparse as they are, next to the couch. It’s not like it makes much of a difference, considering the open floor plan, but Dean hates walking in there.

The coffee pot hasn’t changed its measurements in three days.)

 

* * *

 

When the sound of sharp _thuds_ echo throughout the room, he’s halfway through some documentary on Alaska. He shakes himself out of his daze and glares at the front door, wondering who the hell would bother to knock. Sighing, he gets up and moves to the door. “I swear to god, Charlie,” he mumbles under his breath, but is stopped when he opens the door and finds someone who is definitely _not_ Charlie (though the hair is a bit misleading) standing there instead.

“Anna. Hi.”

She rolls her eyes, smiling. “Hey, Dean.”

“Uh…”

Blinking, the smile fades off of her face. “Shit. Cas is really not here, is he?” she questions, trying to glance over his shoulder like she’ll find a sign of life there. The only thing she’ll be looking at is the mess that’s the living room.

Dean shakes his head. “No. Did he tell you to come here? Why _are_ you here?”

“He told me to find him at Gabriel’s place because he said that he’d been staying there, but I thought he was kidding,” she informs him, focusing her attention back on him.

“Cas has a terrible sense of humor.”

Anna sighs, sounding suddenly way too tired. “I know. That’s why I thought it was a joke. It’s not, is it?” Her voice becomes irritatingly gentle with the last four words, and he tries not to scowl at her. It’s not her fault, after all, that’s he’s being grumpy.

“No. I haven’t seen much of him since midway through June,” he says, but shuffles to the side so that she can come inside if she wants to.

Very slightly, she shakes her head. “What an ass.”

He laughs once, the sound getting caught in his throat. “Tell me about it.” Dean shifts his weight from one foot to the other before asking, “So why did you say you were out here again?”

She lifts an eyebrow. “The… gallery? That’s tomorrow?”

“ _Shit_. Is it really tomorrow?”

“Yeah,” she laughs, moving her suitcase to rest against the wall. “It’s almost the end of July, so yes, Dean, it’s tomorrow. Forgotten already? No worries, you’re welcome. I’ll see you tomorrow then, right?”

He barely has time to blink before she’s hugging him. “Yeah, sure.”

“Good. Though you may want to shower,” she tells him, pulling away. “You reek.”

 

* * *

 

Despite his better judgements, he goes to the gallery.

On the downside, the first thing he sees is his family, blocking the view of his own sculpture. “Hi,” he says, figuring that there’s no way to avoid them, especially if they came all the way from Kansas for him.

Sam spins around first, grinning. “Dean, this is awesome.”

He gives a noncommittal shrug. He hasn’t even seen the completed project. “I just did the sculpture. Cas painted.”

Disbelieving eyes turn back towards the project. “Seriously? That’s— that’s crazy. It’s really good. I can see why you wanted the center piece. It really just draws your eyes in, doesn’t it, Mom?”

From beside him, Mary smiles. “It’s beautiful, sweetheart. Where’s my other boy, so I can congratulate him as well?”

Dean scuffs his shoes against the floor, looking down. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? I thought you’d talked it all out…”

He shakes his head. “I haven’t seen him since a few days before Sam and I took our road trip.”

She seems to consider something, and then glances back at the project that he still hasn’t looked towards. “Have you seen the final outcome?”

Again, he shakes his head. “No. Just the sculpture.”

“Then look at it.”

He wants to argue, but when he sees no point to it he turns to face his final art project.

Dean remembers it, of course, knows the shape and texture and feel of it by eyesight alone. He can recall countless hours trying to sculpt it into something new. The thought of warmer days and working around the studio fill his head, Cas sitting somewhere in the room with a pencil and scraps of paper. He knows the shape of it, but he doesn’t recognize it by sight.

Cas is a fucking genius.

He’s not sure how Cas has done it, but the entire piece is hanging from clear wires from a white, rectangular border that’s, in turn, being held up from thicker, darker wires that are connected to the ceiling. The piece on it’s own isn’t much— vague shapes that could resemble something sort of humanoid, but Dean can see the time and effort in every paint stroke. He’s turned them into the people that Dean couldn’t.

It’s a man gripping another man’s shoulder. They’re the most complete parts of the structure, the shoulder and the hand pressed together, followed by the basic shape of the face (Dean can see parts where his paper mache hadn’t stuck in some places and left some wide gaps in it’s place, but it seems to work out anyway) and then the torso itself, which was mostly just wisps of the paper mache/clay that he’d tried to mold together.

Cas has painted it into an angel lifting a man from hell.

(The angel’s eyes are green, and the man’s are blue. Dean won't call it a coincidence, because Cas doesn't believe in those.)

Dean squeezes his eyes shut, turning away to collect himself for a few moments before looking back. He can tell that white was the original base coat, and it can still be seen in some places. The angel is mostly white with dark purples and blues splattered around covered in white dots. The wings that Dean had spent almost a whole two weeks on are dark, dark purple with swirls of blue in them with more of the same small white specks ( _stars_ , his mind supplies) spread out among them. The man is a little darker, a little more fiery, full of reds and yellows and sometimes black, that starts from the bottom and then fades out on the way up. On the singular place of contact, blue seems to be trailing down the man’s shoulder, and the brief flash of reds circle up the angel’s wrist.

He doesn’t need an explanation to understand what Cas is trying to say.

“Dean?” Sam’s voice pulls him back, and his brother begins to wave an envelope in front of his face. “This was sitting underneath you project when we got here, but it had your name on it so I snatched it before anyone else could. I think Cas wrote it.”

Warily, Dean takes the envelope from him. Carefully, carefully, he opens it.

 

_you are a galaxy_

_but I am a mere star_

_and I cannot fathom you_

__

_you are wavelengths and airways_

_you are as an ocean_

_you are vast and strange and I may never know you_

_but I love you_

_and it counts all the same_

 

Dean Winchester doesn’t cry, except for the times when he does.

 

* * *

 

Dean finds him at the music shop which— _of course_ , is probably where he could’ve found him the entire time had he been thinking about it. Cas is standing between tables, his back to the door, a stack of CDs tucked against his body. As far as Dean can tell, he’s trying to organize them, but the angle of Cas’ body blocks out the view of what he’s doing with his hands.

Cas doesn’t move when the bell on the door goes off (Dean doesn’t expect him too) so he stands in the doorway, trying to decide on his next move. What is he supposed to say?

 _I found the note you left at the gallery_ —

(no).

_I can’t stop thinking about you—_

(he already knows that).

_I was scared—_

(definitely not).

_I’m still scared. Why would you—_

(don’t finish that).

_I love you too—_

(it’s just four words; you mean them, don’t you)?

“Cas—”

"You're late," Cas tells him without looking up from the CDs he's organizing.

Biting his lip, he takes a step forward and then, feeling brave, Dean points out, "You weren't at the gallery."

Cas shrugs. "I'd already seen it. I was the last person to set up, so I took a small walk through before I left for here." His fingers hesitate for a few seconds, skimming idly over the top of one of the cases before he resumes flicking through them. "I'm surprised you went at all, actually."

Dean huffs, and then blurts, "You wrote me a poem, Cas. You— you keep telling me you love me, over and over again, and all I can think about is the fact that you never let me say anything."

"You didn't have to," Cas says, so quiet that Dean can barely hear him.

He opens his mouth to continue but then stops when the words finally register. "What do you mean I didn't have to?"

Cas finally looks up at him. "It was your hands."

"My... hands?" he asks, staring down at said body parts. "What about my hands?"

Dean looks up in time to see a flash of blue before Cas is turning back to the CD display. "You're an extremely expressive person, Dean," Cas begins, moving to the next row. "Of course, that doesn't usually mean that the expressions that you show are the ones you're feeling. You cover it, sometimes, when you think you need to. But your hands— they're expressive too. I've gotten used to reading them. It's easier than reading your face most of the time. When I told you—

For as long as he can remember, it’s always been Dean’n’Cas. Dean isn’t really sure when they met anymore, when they became friends (though Cas could probably tell you the date and time, if asked), but, regardless, after spending nearly twenty-something years of their lives together, it’s common sense to know everything about each other, have every small, little detail unknowingly memorized.

Dean has seen a lot of expressions on Cas’ face, but he’s never seen _this_ one, the set-in-stone appearance of someone who’s given up every last hope and dream, and he can slowly feel his heart breaking, piece by piece.

“When I told you,” Cas repeats, “they were so still. I— I didn’t know what else to think, Dean.”

There’s a lot of things about Cas that Dean is absolutely sure about: his eyes are blue, he hates coffee but can’t stop drinking it, he constantly has something on his hands, whether it’s charcoal or paint or something else entirely, everything has a certain place (in his closet, the refrigerator door, the plates in the cabinet), and he’s an absolute fucking _mess_ — but Dean is so absolutely, completely, devastatingly in love with him that it physically _hurts_.

“Cas,” he breathes. “You fucking idiot.”

They’re moving towards each other then, or maybe Dean is moving towards him, but it doesn’t matter anymore because they are reaching for each other and (shit) those are Cas’s hands on his face, pulling him closer, and (fuck) those are Cas’s lips on his, warm and slightly chapped and (a drug, they’re a fucking drug and Dean’s already hooked) they taste like something minty. He chases after the flavor with lips and tongue and teeth, and he could scream from how perfect this feels, how ( _right_ ) normal it is.

Eventually, though, they have to pull apart, and at first the only thing he can hear is his own heart pounding in his ears, but within seconds he registers the sound of someone clapping.

“Congrats on the gay!” Charlie announces, and _shit_ , Dean forgot that she works here too. They stumble apart, jumping away from each other as if they had gotten caught doing something illegal. “Please tell me that this is your first kiss.”

The two of them exchange looks. “Why?”

If anything, the grin on her face grows. “Gentlemen, Benny is about to make me $20 richer. I’ve been betting on this for a long, long time.”

They exchange looks, glancing at each other through the corner of their eyes. “Oh, fuck no,” she says, the smile disappearing off her face. “You guys didn’t— You _did_.”

“We were drunk!” Dean exclaims, emitting the fact that they did much more than _kiss_. But Charlie doesn’t need to know that (now).

Her sigh is heavy in the air, a weight on their shoulders. “You two are a disgrace. But I’m not about to lose $20, so if Benny asks, this is totally your first kiss.” Charlie adds a glare on for good measure, and they both nod. “Good. Now get out of here. You two are making sappy puppy dog faces that make me want to puke.”

For once, he doesn’t want to argue.

 

* * *

 

“It’s been… empty, without you here,” he admits softly as they step over the threshold.

The look on Cas’ face is sad, regretful. “Yeah,” he agrees. “I know the feeling.”

 

* * *

 

It’s about as hard to fall out of the routine as it had to fall into it.

Over the past few weeks, Dean has gotten used to the unnatural silence and the neverending _lonely lonely lonely_ that had drummed through his veins. Having Cas back in the apartment feels just as strange. Not only can Dean look at him, know he’s there just by seeing him, but he can _touch_ now, too, or, at least, he thinks he can.

Maybe the kiss at the record shop they’d shared merely thirty minutes ago means nothing now. He’s not sure.

Cas huffs about the state of the living room and immediately goes about trying to get rid of some of the old food rappers. When Dean attempts to help, he just points to the couch with a look that says if Dean even _thinks_ about it, there will be repercussions later. (And, no, Dean doesn’t get excited about that thought. Nope. Not even a little bit.)

It helps, though, listening to Cas clearing things away, and he gets so lost in it, the feeling of having back something he didn’t realize how much he missed, that when Castiel’s hands come to rest on his shoulders, he starts, half expecting a fight.

Despite it all, Dean still feels… skittish. Cas is back. He should be happy, pleased— hell, he _is_ — but there’s still some uncrossed boundary between them that he can’t seem to identify, and he can’t stand it.

He tips his head backwards, pleased when the angle allows his lips to brush against Cas’s lips. Satisfied, Dean’s shoulders sag, and he relaxes back into the couch. So— good, then. Kissing is good. Actually, kissing is more than good. Contemplating, he hesitates for a few seconds before slotting his mouth with Cas’s. Cas lets out a soft breath, fingers moving forward to hold Dean’s face.

“I never got to say it back,” he tells Cas, needing to get it off his chest. “I was going to, at the park. God, I just saw you sitting on that stupid bench completely soaked and I was so angry at you, you idiot, because you never even let me say anything. The second I saw you I was going to tell you. But then you got angry and I couldn’t do it, not when you had to bring up _Cassie_ , of all people. Asshole.”

Cas frowns. “I think I asked too much out of you at one time. I should’ve waited, at least.”

“Mmm,” Dean hums, a faint smile crossing over his lips. “I love you. You’re an idiot, but I love you.”

He doesn’t make any outward movements, but Dean knows. He can tell it in the way Cas’s lips seek out his again, can feel it in the tenderness of Cas’s hands against his face. _I love you, too_ , it says, and while Cas is a man of words, in this moment, it’s the loudest Dean’s ever heard him. “You seem rather fond of calling me that.”

“No shame in what you are, Cas.” Dean’s hands begin to move up to grab Cas’s face.

Sighing, Cas pulls away. Panicked for a few seconds, Dean holds still until Cas reaches out for his hand in an attempt to yank him off the couch. Confusion settles over him, but once he understands where Cas is going, the confusion automatically shifts into excitement. “What’re we doing, hmm?” Dean teases.

Cas glances back at him, raising an eyebrow. “Dean Winchester, I’m about to blow your mind.”

He grins, then, allowing Cas to pull him along. “Isn’t this a little too soon in our relationship, Cas? We’ve only known each other for a few years, you know.

“It isn’t like we haven’t done it before. But not soon enough is more like it. Do you remember when you decided playing lacrosse was a good idea sophomore year?” Cas asks, pausing at Dean’s bedroom door.

“Yeah. It made me realize how much I hate running.”

“You were very sweaty all the time. It was very distracting,” Cas concedes, smirking. Then, with a look that reminds him of a lethal cat, Cas straightens. “It’s been a very, very long time, Dean.”

(This is happiness, Dean thinks, pressing his lips to Cas’. Somewhere between a messy perfectionist and a touch-starved asshole it’s _home_.)

 

* * *

 

It ends the same way it started, finding sketches on their shitty kitchen table in their shitty apartment on a shitty, hot day in late August.

He almost walks past them, not seeing them at first as he goes to get a cup of coffee. Once he notices the flash of white out of the corner of his eye, though, he can't push it out of his mind. Carefully, he sets the pot down and makes his way to the table and then takes a few seconds to peer into the living room. Cas is still preoccupied with the TV, so he grabs the sketch on top of the pile.

It's of him.

It's him in a way that would be extremely embarrassing if he wasn't him. (Who the fuck is he kidding, it's _still_ embarrassing, regardless of who he is.) That's the lines of his torso, the gentle curve of his fingers relaxed next to his head, the awkward tangle of his legs twisted in the sheets. It's glaringly obvious that he's naked, the sheet doing little (though thankfully enough) to hide his indecency.

He really, _really_ , doesn’t want to ask, but then his eyes drift down to the rest of the pile and finds the exact opposite on the next piece of paper. It’s of him laughing, sitting on the couch watching who knows what. Dean tries to place it, knowing it _must_ be recent, but with the angle, there’s no way it could’ve been recent, not unless Cas had done it from memory, because Cas always sits on the right side of the couch and the angle seems to be more from the left.

There’s more, still, beneath that, cooking and smiling and drawing and sleeping and one, even, of him sculpting in the studio which was— _fuck_ — not since he had to do it almost a year ago, now, for their final art project. Under those are more familiar ones, his eyes and lips and then drawings of hands, and—

They’re the same hands.

The same sketches Dean had found on the table all those months ago, the same ones that Cas had gotten flustered over— _here_ , among drawings of Dean.

(Which, okay, Dean knows that Cas has loved him for years. It just hasn’t occurred to him, exactly, that these sketches would’ve been of him, that the hands Cas had drawn with such fine detail were _his_ hands. It makes sense, thinking about it now, but all that time they’d been wasting, if only he’d just _known_.)

“Cas?”

Startled, Cas looks up, abandoning the TV in an instant when he realizes what Dean is doing. “Shit,” he says as he stumbles into the kitchen, reaching out for the papers still in Dean’s hands. “You weren’t supposed to see those.”

Before he can think about what he’s doing, he moves them above his head. “Cas,” he whispers again, “these are from years ago.”

Cas pauses, his hand slowly moving back. “...Yes, and?”

He tries again, “These are from _years_ ago,” and he thinks that his voice cracks somewhere in there, but he can’t help it, not when Cas is looking at him like that, like the world revolves around one point and that one point is Dean. “You _asshole_." And he knows it’s years, it has to be, but, “How long?”

Dean thinks back to all the times that Cas has made him stay still on purpose, all of moments where he threatened Dean so he could get the right color or angle. There must’ve been somewhere in there that changed, right? Some point where the look in Cas’s eyes had been soft— one moment that shifted everything else into place. (He can't think of one, but later he'll realize it was _always_ there.)

“Since the very first line.”

And he opens his mouth to ask another question, but— five years old, sitting at a desk while the rest of the class ran around the room or sat in groups with toys. Noticing the small boy out of the corner of his eye, the boy that would one day become his best friend, though there was no way he could’ve known it at the time.

“The very beginning?” Dean questions, voice almost a whisper.

Cas’ smile is just as soft as his voice. “From the very start until right now. Right now and the rest of my life.”

“There were so many other people, so many other opportunities, so much that could've—” Dean attempts to point out, but Cas just shakes his head.

“No,” he says, and Dean marvels at how far they’ve gone, how much shit they’ve had to go through. He wonders how he could possibly deserve someone like Cas, how he could possibly be the focus of that much love and affection. “There’s billions of stars in the sky,” Cas goes on.

“None of them shine as bright as you.”


End file.
